03 June 2010

Budget fail

I know I'm about the last budget-minded person on the planet to hop on the Mint.com bandwagon, or at least to be blogging about it. We started using it in February (maybe), and we were really good at first. We tried to be really aware of where our money was going and what our unusual spending would be. Then May happened. I was not feeling so hot. We went on a cruise. We lived in Eric's parents' house. We moved and had to start paying rent again. Plus we had to completely re-stock an empty pantry and empty fridge. Not to mention furniture.

With a new rather expensive little person coming to our family soon, I knew that we needed to start cracking down again. We logged on the other night, and basically saw this:
Essentially, it says, "YOU ARE OVER ALL YOUR BUDGETS!" Well, almost that. The ones that are at $0 are the ones that are new bills that won't get charged until June. I added them to the budget before I took the screen capture. I sure do wish we could pretend May never happened.

(If you aren't familiar with Mint.com, the yellow means you have met your budget or nearly so. The reddish/orange means you've gone over. The green means you are still safely under budget. And the blank lines are where you haven't spent any money yet.)

I really do recommend the website, by the way. Very, very cool. (I'm not sure if it will sync with international banks, so it may be a only useful to Americans right now. Sorry, my international friends.)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I like that those orange lines are not RED and loudly yelling at you! It's more of a soft reprimand.

Packrat said...

oooo, it hurts, doesn't it? Mint.com doesn't work for us, because we don't use our debit cards that much. Wish there was a way to manually input, too.

trishtator said...

Other option (even though I currently use both): google "Pear Budget Spreadsheet." It's an Excel file that is totally set up as a budget, with lots of tools and stuff.

I like spending money. The end.