Bill Calculator Based on Income

Hey guys, grady's mom here. Today, I wanted to do a budgeting post, or sort of like a bill calculation based on income. And I wanted to show you guys the method that I use to keep track of my monthly bills each month. Now, by bills, I don't mean things like groceries, or gas, or miscellaneous purchases. I just mean, actual bills that come every single month. You know, things like your mortgage, your utilities, your car payments, things like that.

So, what I've created here is a mock of what I actually do now. All these sort of categories of the different bills I pay every month are legitimately things that I really do pay every month. The only thing here, that is sort of going to be a depiction is the actual amounts of the bills. I do feel, you know, that it's just a little bit to private to share actual to the penny dollar amounts of what my monthly bills are.

However, I will say that, they are pretty close as far as what my monthly totals are going to add up. So again, all of the actual names of the places that I pay my bills are real. These are real things that I pay every single month. The only thing that is going to be, I guess, you could call a depiction are the dollar amounts.

So, what I did was I just configure the dollar amounts, and sort of tweet them a little bit. So, it added up very very close to what we actually pay each month, but again, just for privacy. I don't want to show exactly to the penny what exactly we're paying each month. So, I have been using this exact method for ten years. Or you could ?, I guess call it nine and a half years. So, I'm just gonna say ten years, the reason I do it this way where I physically old school where they can write it down is because it keeps me in check, now I know a lot of people don't choose to do it this way, and that's fine.

I'm not saying this is the right way to do it. This is just the way that I do it that I have found the most successful way for me to be able to hold myself, accountable to physically grab old school, a pen and paper, write every single thing down each month, and then write. When I write the check, or pay the bill online, I make sure I check it off with the check number, and the date, and everything, so I can quickly just reference my notebook each week, or month, and see what is do so the way that.

I do it each month is I have three sort of columns. I have what the bill is, the amount of the bill, and the due dates. And then, I organize these by the dates they are due. So I start with the bill that is due the earliest in the month, and go all the way down as you can see to the very end of the month. That's just what works for me. The reason why I choose to do it this way is so that when my husband gets his paycheck every Friday, I can look to see, you know exactly what's do when it's do and it goes in order.

So, I'm not bouncing all around. You know this is due the twentieth, this is do the fourth. I just do it right in order, so I can almost even go down the list and just pay. You know whatever bill is due the previous, you know the next week I can pay it the week before, or whatever based on my husband's paycheck.

So again, I've been using this method for almost ten years. And pretty much what I do now, this would be last month. So what I would do is I have my mortgage first, because it's my biggest bill, and it is due on the first. So what I would do is for the mortgage, I would just write the check, and then I would mark the date, which is may thirtieth check that it's paid. And the check number, I write the check number just again to hold myself accountable. So I know, to balance my checkbook, and you know just kind of keep track.

I try to keep it pretty simple and cut and dry. So it's just again, the bill, the amount, and the due date, it's very simple, and this method has been working for me, extremely well for the past ten years, and I don't think I would ever do it any other way. I think I'm just gonna continue to do it that way.

Here I have the categories of mortgage. My cable and Internet, which are combined. Duke energy, which is just our utilities verizon, which is our cell phone bill state farm, which is our car insurance, my pathfinder loan, my husband's truck loan, my gym membership. And along with my CPI, home security, those two things are electric. They're paid electronically, you know, just taken out of our bank account electronically, so I don't have to worry about writing a physical each month for these two things.

Now, we have a credit card, we have several credit cards. But we don't carry we don't have any credit card debt. We used our credit card last month on our for our family vacation. So the reason I have it here and then not anywhere else is because when we do use our credit card, we pay it off in the fall, unless obviously for some reason we can. Um...so I just have the m.x. credit card, and I put in parentheses vacation. So I know exactly why we have that balanced with the amount, and I paid it off in fall last month, and I did indeed pay it off in full.

So, then I do my monthly total bills again, that is everything here and last month in June, it was fifty eight hundred fifty one dollars and ninety nine cents. Obviously, a lot higher because of this amount here, but now this is paid off. So moving into July, you're not going to see American Express because that card is paid off again. If I didn't have the money to pay it off and fall, then I wouldn't be able to obviously so. A normal months bills again, not groceries, not gas, not extras, or anything like that, just my bills. I have 3190,57, which is fairly close to what we pay, and then when you tack on groceries, gas and again, miscellaneous or recreational things.

Obviously, it's a lot higher. So whatever we can save each month, we save if there's you know, a bigger expense. Like for example; back in May, we had to pay our car tax, which is a year, or once a year tax we have to pay here in South Carolina and ours was about $2000. So in May, we were able to save as much money. You know, nearly as much money because an extra $2000 came out of this to pay that yearly car tax, but luckily it only comes obviously once a year. Again, what I do like for July that we're in right now. I have the mortgage paid, the cable and Internet paid, the utility bill paid, the cell phone bill paid, and the car insurance paid. And then, when my husband gets his next track, I'll just chip away. You know, all of these things. And then again, I have to budget with his track not only with bills, but for our weekly groceries, our weekly gas, my husband spends roughly about $100 a week in gas, He commutes to North Carolina and we live in South Carolina. So He commutes about an hour each way to work.

In addition to that, he sometimes has to drive here and there for different job related things. So he easily spends $100 a week, and gas is pretty cheap here. But he does have a truck, and I spend about $50 - $60 a week as well myself. So, it just helps me stay in check, and then I know, you know what bills I can pay, and then what money I need to leave left over from his track to be able to buy our weekly groceries to give our gas budget,you know, to give us cash for gas if there's maybe something coming up that are somewhere that I'm going that I know, I need extra money that week.

I need to be able to budget all of that out of my husband's check. I'm really glad he gets paid once a week. It makes it easier for me to know what I can pay, what I can't pay, what I can save, and what I can't save. And then my money that I make just from either reselling items, or my Blog earnings. It could be whatever little mommy money that I have. I just kind of use that for mainly things for my son, or something for myself, or something for my husband. I don't really use that for too many bills right now. I am working on being able to use my mommy money for my sons back to school, clothes and shoes, and things like that.

Anyways, this is just how I do it. I just have a notebook just like this one, nothing fancy. And by actually writing it out every month, it just holds me accountable, because I manage the money. So this is what's working for me.

The reason I wanted to share is because I know there's a lot of people who don't really have a method. They just kind of get a bill in the mail and when they can pay it, they pay it, and sometimes with that method, it's hard to keep track of what you paid, what you didn't pay. And if you're anything like me, your memory can sometimes be a little fuzzy with mom brain.

So again, I hope this gave you some good insight if you're looking for a way to do this in a very simple way, no spreadsheets, nothing fancy, just simple cut and dry pen and paper every month, and it just really, really works for me. And I would highly recommend putting your bills in the order of due date just so that you can quickly reference and see what's do when it's do, and then you know how much you have to work with, and how many bills you can pay.

So i hope you guys enjoyed the post, and i hope you guys have a great day. Bye guys.