How do you budget your income?  How do you log your expenses?

When you do monthly data, how do you count your income if you are paid weekly?  Just count 4 checks and when a month comes around with 5 pay days just throw the 5th check into savings?

What else do you do?

no budget.

I just dont buy anything.

Quoted: no budget. I just dont buy anything.

That's actually what I've been doing for many years.  Being single with no kids, I have always made more than enough to cover my expenses and save money.  I never had to set a budget or log my expenses.

I would like to start just to see what I'm spending my income on and I would like to budget to see if I could save even more money.

Income/Expenses are logged into MS Money. With over 4 years of data I can easily caculate how much money I need per paycheck. Anything left over that figure goes into a long term savings account.

It's called the Wing-it system; a highly evolved scrapbook of not-paying-attention.

I have little green pieces of paper with numbers on them to keep track of how much currency I have.  

I use Quicken. For each paycheck you receive you need to enter your pay. Plus you have to enter and account for every single penny spent unless you just want to categorize a can of soda at the machine a miscellaneous expenses. However then you don't really get a true picture of where your money is going. It becomes a pain in the ass at first but once you get into rhythm you can map exactly where you are wasting your money!! I found that my largest single optional expense was going out to lunch. Once I reduced that spending I suddenly found my next greatest expense increase was guns stuff!!

hmm i just downloaded Quicken trial, and frankly my 8 page spreadsheet seems alot simpler to use and more useful

I just use an excel sheet.  

I run out of money when I run out of checks. And if anybody asks, I wasn't here.

BRB, somebody's at the door.

hmm after playing with quicken for an hour I am now convinced I can do it all better with a spreadsheet, except for future predictions.

Anyone know how to write a function in OpenOffice that is date dependent?

IE something like

IF(check date command)>X then input a deposit/ debit?

My brain.

I check my bank account balance.  Then I try not to spend more money then I have.

After bills of course....

Does that count as a system?

MS Money

I use Excel to keep track of my normal monthly stuff, mortgage, electric, etc.  Just to make sure I didn't misplace a bill and forget about it.  

I log my earnings and expenditures in my check book.  Receipts for expenses are managed by giving them to the Mrs, who happens to a meticulous records keeper.

Quoted: I run out of money when I run out of checks. And if anybody asks, I wasn't here. BRB, somebody's at the door.

Dude, you look, and sound just like my brother!!!(if that is your picture)

If nothing goes to overdraft protection, then YEAH ME!!

I just keep a flat text file for all my accounts: checking, savings, credit card.  For checking I just put the date, memo, transacation amount on each line, sort of mimicking the old check book ledger.  Then I wrote a perl program (one of the benefits of having programming skills) that will add and subtract all the transactions to the penny.

Then with each months statement I balance the checkbook, crossing off everything thats in the statement.  Works well.

I keep a log by year of stuff I buy, rounded up or down to the nearest dollar, it's just a running flat file as well.  I use the same perl program to add up how much stuff I've spent.

If what I buy has a serial number, I put the serial number in the description field.  Great for insurance purposes

System works pretty good, I can grep for "ammo" for example, and specify a wildcard for the filespec and find how much I've spent on ammo over the years.