That means for me, a big picture person, keeping track of money needs to be streamlined. I don't want to obsess about it; I don't want to have to keep a running ledger of every single thing we buy every day, subtracting for bills that still need to be paid, to find out how much we currently have. And I don't want to have to discuss it constantly. In the evening I want to talk to my husband about the world, our kids, to laugh with him and hopefully cuddle. I don't want our conversation to be one where we go over our receipts.
But I still need to know how much we have at any given moment to stay within our budget.
So how do you live your life and still have control of your money?
Here is where having two checking
The first checking account is the Bills account. All money is deposited or direct deposited into this account. Just like the name implies this is the account bills are paid from, either in the form of automatic payment or, if you have to, by snail mail with a check. We personally leave 1860 dollars in this account each month to cover the rent (water is included), car payment, electricity, car/home insurance, the internet bill, the credit card bill, 2 hospital bills we are paying off month by month, and netflix. If we have a strange bill that pops up, something the dentist forgot to charge so he sent it though the mail, we also account for that.
All of these bills, except for the rent, are payed by an automatic debit to our account or through my credit unions automatic bill pay. And the only reason rent is paid by check is because something strange was going on with the post office and it kept returning the rent check to the bank instead of delivering it to our landlord! (yikes) So, we actually have to write it out and walk it up to the front office. Because I have everything set up on automatic debts or payments I spend literally 15 minutes every month dealing with bills. Most of which consists of going through junk mail to search out the actual bills. (If only there was a way to stop the junk mail...)
The best part of having a separate Bills account is that it makes it so that as long as you don't touch the money in this account, you will never overdraft your account again. The rule is, after the money is in there for the month, it doesn't exist. We don't touch it.
However, we can spend money from our checking Flexible account. At the first of the month the money that is leftover after accounting for what is put in the Bills account is transferred into this account. This money will be used to buy food, gas, medicine, clothes, go to doctor visits, and for entertainment. This separate account has the benefit of letting us see exactly how fast we are spending our usable money as well as exactly what we are spending it on.
Since I know we only have a set amount in this account to last entire month I check this account online every few days or so. I check it especially after weekends when we tend to spend more money. It just takes minutes to do this. If I see that we spent 250 dollars in one week because we splurged, or had an unexpected expense, we will reign in spending for a few days or a week to even it out for the next week so we have enough to last us through the rest of the month. That means eating what is in the house and only buying gas if we need it to get to work. Also, since we only use our debit on this account we cannot overdraft. If the money runs out the card simply gets declined.
I do have two debit cards, one for the bills and one for the flexible account which I label on the back so I can tell them apart. Just put the bills account card away so you aren't tempted to use it.
This system has allowed us to live our life without letting money run our life.
If you have a secret way or organizing money please share in the comments! I'd love to hear it.
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