Finiancial Tools to Budget Money

My husband, Ryne, and I are on a journey to get out of debt.  We cannot do this alone.  Helping track of out financial situation is hard.  With the access of online financial tools and this has helped make our journey a little smoother.

My husband and I have been studying up one Davey Ramsey's budgeting plan.  He has several resources for people to use.  When my we first began our journey, I purchased The Starter Bundle.  I think when I purchased the bundle it was $50.  But there are times when Dave Ramsey hold sales, especially around the holiday season.  This bundle includes 2 books, an audio book,, envelop money system, cash flow and dump debt DVDs, and a couple of ebooks.

The package when I purchased is was a little different but are great resources to refer too.   This has made me consciously aware of my budget and some of the mistakes that we have made along the way.  Ramsey answers a lot of common questions and gives reasons as to why or why not it is financially healthy.

Several other resources can help you develop and make you consciously aware of your budget. Please note that following tools financial advisors.  Everyone will have a different budget because everyone has a different lifestyle and life circumstance, so what will work for one person will not work for another person. But this tool can help you set up your budget and keep track of finances.
There are several tools out there to help you budget your money:

If you have not already, you need to download you bank app on your phone.  I have two different banks that I work with. One is a big change that is nationally known and we have a private small town bank.  Both have apps so at anytime, I can log on to them and see how much money we in our accounts at all times.  I also have my bank accounts set up so that I if my accounts fall below $100 I receive a text message notifying that I have limited funds in my account.

EveryDollar: 
EveryDollar is a budgeting to provided by Dave Ramsey.  This is a free tool that allows its users to create a budget.  You are allowed to put in your own income, create different categories and to set up your budget.  On the side, it shows you percentages of categories to how and where most of you money is being spent.

Every Dollar has an app for iPhones and Androids to help keep track of your spending as your spending.  For example, you go grocery shopping, you can keep track of your spending and will show how much money you have help in that budget.

For a small monthly fee of $8.25 or $99 annually, you can link your bank card to your account.  Shortly after your bank processes them, they will show on your EveryDollar account.  You then can click and drag your spending in your budgets and it will automatically withdrawal from your budgets to show how much you have left.

Change: 
Change is a service that sends our a text message to notify you of your daily spending.  Not know much about this app when I signed up was a large leap of faith for me in hopes that I would suffer from identity fraud.  Even when I reviewed their site I told them of my skeptism, and they assured me that my information was secure.  I have utilized this too for about 6 months and haven't had any problems with it.  It is nice to be informed how much money in my account, so I am not tempted to spend my money and is a great reminder of my ultimate goal.

Prosper Daily
Proper Daily is an app available for iPhone and Android.  This app, when given you account information for bank account and credit cards shows the balance on each account,  What purchases were made, a monthly spending tracker.  This great reference when trying to figure out how much money you have in all of your accounts and a compilation of how much money you have spent in total for them month and then compares it to previous months

All of these resources are secure sites.  They have personally kept my information safe.  I am not paid for these reviews, they are tools have helped me become more financially aware.

Snowball Effect- Debt Reiief

My husband and I have been wanting to get out of debt, more so me than him because I sit close to $60,000 in student loan debt and am still taking graduate courses.  We have dabbled with the Dave Ramsey plan of getting out of debt.  The cash budget, is very hard for us.  This is a challenge in it of itself.  We now have two separate bank accounts and one account is our daily living money, and one is strictly just for bills.

Some piece of debt relief that we have done is the snowball effect.  For those of you who unfamiliar with the snowball effect it paying extra on one loan.  When that loan is paid off, you take the what you paid over and the payment from loan that you paid off and put it toward your next loan.

For example:

Loan 1:  $1000
     Minimum payment $50 +$50 over pay means you can have this paid off in 10 month opposed to 20 months.

Loan 2:  $2,000
      Minimum payment $50.  You start paying $50 for 10 months until Loan 1 is paid off.  Then on month 11 you will pay $50 + $100=$150. After 10 more months, this loan will be paid off. This loan should have taken 40 months to pay off, but instead using the snowball effect will take 20 months to pay off.

Loan 3: $3,000
      Minimum payment $50.  You start paying $50 for 20 months until Loan 1 and Loan is paid off.  Then on month 21 you will pay $50 +$150= $200.  After consolidating the payments, it will take 10 more months to pay off. This loan should have taken 60 months to pay off, but instead using the snowball effect will take  a total 30 months to pay off.

This $6,000 of debt should have taken 120 months by paying the minimum  every month to pay off got cut to 30 months.

My husbands student loans are now paid off, now onto focusing on mine!

The Breakdown of the Dave Ramsey Plan

      After  reading and listening to Dave Ramey.  I have found that it is very important to get the support of your spouse.  My husband, Ryne, didn't really know a whole lot about the Dave Ramsey Plan.  So, I put together our budget and my husband and I sat down and tweeked it so both him and I were happy.
      Let me tell you at this point, I know that I think I have have everything covered in our budget.  But, I bet I am forgetting something.  It is amazing how much money that we have going for our bills and how little we actually get t spend on ourselves for our needs and our wants.   I know that we are going to have to make sacrifices to be able to afford everything in our budget.
     So where did we start?  Well, we started with Dave's Seven Baby Steps.  Ryne and I acutally have double the recommended amount of an emergency fund, so were good to go.  The second step is to pay off all the debt with the snowball effect.
     The second step is a HUGE step.  This is actually a the step when you come to the realization of how much debt you actually are in.  This step does not include your mortgage payment.  I had to recored EVERY student loan amount, interest rate, and minimum balance.  With each individual loan, we have like 20 loans.  These have been consolidated to the point so we only paying 4 creditors.  Then we had to write down all of credit card debt information.  We currently do no have a car payment, so there is nothing to write down here.
   There are several Apps or Websites that can help you keep track of all your debt and can actually run the snowball effect for you.  You can get it set up to either pay smallest amount first or highest interest rate.  I personally like the smallest amount because though I would be saving money on interest rates,  I like the fact I woud like I am making a dent in my debt.  A website that I would recommend is the Dave Ramsey's My Total Money Makeover.
   After writing down, all of our debt, bills, and mortgage. The percentages were shocking.  One/Fourth of our monthly income goes to our debt,  One/fourth of our monthly income goes to our mortgage.  Another  fourth of our debt goes to bill and the last fourth goes toward groceries, clothes, toiletries, etc.  The thought of only having a forth to live off of is kind of suffocating. But I hope we can get to the point where it doesn't feel like we are on as tight of a leash.