3 Budget Strategies For Different Personality Types | The 3-Minute Guide

The Financial Diet site:

[backtothebooks]

I'm on a very strict budget at the moment, so I'm using the envelope method, but rather than having envelopes for different areas of payment, I literally have four envelopes, one for each week of the month and they contain the amount of money I'm allowed to spend that week. That covers everything after rent/bills and I can put more money in an envelope if I know there's a social event etc in that week. This means that whenever I spend I can see my money going down, and it completely cuts off online spending. It's not something i could do forever but for these few months where I need to be really strict it's the best way to keep me on track.

[knittingarch]

Ma'am! Did you just say you lived in NY ON $23K??? Can we get a video on how you made that work?

[janebaker]

I have a irregular income. I TEP. Do it one pen and paper on a clip board in my kitchen. I pretty much live like I'm poor and save the rest. It works for me.

[riunikii]

I struggled with budgeting for a long time. Everyone talks only about tracking every dollar which i could never do. Until I watched this video and discovered the envelope method. It is perfect for me. I was struggling with lifestyle inflation before this but now I am back to living within my means and building that all important emergency fund. Thanks a lot

[glovalova]

I love YNAB. I use that for TEP, envelope, and zero sum budgeting. We live on last month’s income and it helped me pay off about 45 thousand dollars in debt, $27000 in just one year.

[ashleyloper]

I have recently graduated college with my bachelors in nursing and have secured a career as a trauma nurse; however, as I have been watching your videos about post-graduation life/money advice I feel a lot of it is centered around jobs where you are paid salary. In nursing, and in most of the medical field we do not make salary. So I would love for you guys to share some thoughts and advice you think would be beneficial for people in a similar career as me. Your videos have been so helpful for me to set myself up for success these past few years, keep it up!

[CrystleDragon]

I use the zero sum method in combination with tracking every penny. I like security, and the envelope system doesn't make sense to me (for example, one week of groceries costs more than the amount of cash I'm comfortable with carrying around) but I do (digitally) track every penny for the month in a document, and have a budget in checklist form in another document. That way I don't allocate a certain amount to say, medicine, when cost goes up unexpectedly and I need to pay for it.

[modelno]

Can you/TFD talk a little bit more about living on a variable income? My work is project based, and I have a hard time determining when to save/when not to save when months are slow. I'd love to hear your opinion, suggestions, tools etc. I'm an excel budgeter myself, so i'm always tracking my expenses, but saving and retirement alway seem to be on hold when I'm low on income for a period of time. And yes, i'm working on some side hustles :)

[BedtimeBookworm]

I love that you mention YNAB! I love their system and they don’t get enough buzz

[Lancaster]

I funnel all of my payments to a single credit card with cashback, everything else is just there for credit history. When you check the credit statement every few days or so you start to notice how the outflow really start to add up.
Envelop method is good too. My credit union offer this piechart that automatically cuts your expenditure into various categories. Tangerine, used to be called ING Direct. Outflow, inflow, FIFO.
Budgeting is easy, the hard part is how to increase inflow cos there's a limit to how much outflow you can cut.

[SamanthaKamilos]

Appreciate very much! Also, signed up for Skillshare, been wanting to but never seem to make the 1st 500 in time on other creators videos! Finally did!

[juliasakowitz]

I used to do a kind of "envelope lite" system - I have 3 checking accounts that my paycheck was divided among; first a rent/bills account which had an extra $1, 000 just in case; then a gas/groceries/medical expenses account; and all the remaining money went into a "fun" account. (plus a savings account with my emergency fund) I had a checkbook for the first account and debit cards for the other two. I liked the system a lot - I knew that if I had money building up in the fun account I could start planning a vacation, and I didn't feel at all guilty spending that money because I knew I could cover all of my living expenses without it.

[laurenconrad]

I use the first method you mentioned. It works pretty well, but it’s kind of a catch-22 for my anxiety. I get so anxious that I feel the need to see where all my money goes. But checking it as frequently as I do is exhausting.

[lindsaymayfield]

I just started using ynab, it’s such a smart way to go. I’m still ironing out some kinks, but in the long run I hope we’ll be able to focus more toward saving up for a house and be more accountable with our eating out habits

[yothiga]

I budget in paper and envelope cash only for food budget and track other things with mobile app.

[loughryc]

I have been using YNAB for about a year now and I really enjoy using it and find it actually useful.

[firewordsparkler]

This is really helpful. Might try the track every penny method because don't really think when I spend.

[theuglybookling]

I'm sort of a TEP budgeter. I give myself £30 (~$42) a week which is purely for spending. No tracking whatsoever. My weekly food budget comes out of that and anything left over I can spend guilt free. Then everything else from my wage I track to the penny. Having some money I can spend guilt free without the need for tracking really helps keep me motivated to track everything else and save money.

[loalion]

Digit rounds up your money to save you cash. It's a pretty cool way of putting money away without really noticing. Great for those who forget to save.

[spaceblaster]

As someone who uses credit cards in order to get the rewards and pays them off every month, I found YNAB quite cumbersome. I even spoke with one of their experts about it, but got really lost when they explained how "easy" it was to use YNAB with the way I use credit cards. Idk I was probably doing something wrong, I'd rather have a budgeting program that is super simple to use.