A Course in Personal Budgeting

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We had a request for a discussion of the best ways to build (and stick with) a personal budget.

So this morning we go out and dig up that field.  After the charts and headlines, as always.  And sure, something about #releasethememo, too…

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George Ure
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/George-Ure/e/B0098M3VY8%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share UrbanSurvival Bio: https://urbansurvival.com/about-george-ure/
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40 thoughts on “A Course in Personal Budgeting”

      • That’s a scare tactic.
        They are afraid of losing control so they put restrictions on it.
        It’s like having a kid who super smart so much smaller than the adult.
        so the adult tries to put some restrictions on it.
        But the kid knows all kinds of ways to get around those restrictions.
        And eventually if the adult wants to keep that kid it’s going to have to change those restrictions.
        The new Millennial kids are way above all us old people ,we just don’t stand a chance at holding back there technology.
        They want to go to the Stars and we won’t let them.
        That’s why it’s going to change to the better and those old laws of slavery and Power over the masses will cease to exist.

        May all beings be lovingly fulfilled so be it

    • You used punctuation. a period. Very good. It would be nice to see you use punctuation more often so readers would not skip you posts due to being unreadable.

      • What do you expect from a 9th grade dropout- under exercised in the English grammar language Department?

    • I don’t think there’s a good way to short it. When it gets low enough, I’ll drop a couple into the crypts, just to get the logistics of it. I’m less of a voluntary gambler than George, though God/Universe sometimes rolls dice on me.

  2. RE: personal budgeting

    I live on Social Security as my sole source of income. I recommend you avoid doing that if at all possible. Nonetheless, it can be done.

    I have Excel and use that for budgeting. First, I tracked what I spent in an old version of Quicken. Then, I averaged those totals and wrote a simple categories calculator broken into two major groups, “Fixed” and “Variable”. All tally to zero compared to SS monthly payment.

    For the Variable, I made a second page in the spreadsheet that shows budgeted amount less purchases with amount remaining available. It’s quick and simple.

    If I have a big expense, usually car repair, I charge it. Then, I either pay it off from my savings or switch it to another card that offered zero interest and pay it off during that period. This usually means keeping Variable spending to minimum and feeling the pinch sometimes.

    Sticking to the discipline of spending per your budget is where the pain comes in. Do it anyway.

  3. George:
    After the coverage I have seen o all the networks, I can’t get over a feeling that the #SchummerShutdown was quickly put together on the back of Durbins assertion of hearing naughty words in the Oval Office, just because they also had wind of the #releasethememo meme comin at them.
    #SchummerShutdown has swept the memo completely off the deck, with the only mention of it this morning on Smerconish, and that in pseudo-refutation. I am kinda thinking this is still a black ugly duckling but may start growing soon.

  4. I have used Mint for several years and have found it to be very helpful. In addition to tracking spending, Mint can help with budgeting and can calculate net worth. (No, I am not a Mint employee.)
    I agree that allowing access to account information has privacy concerns, but I have not experienced any issues.

  5. The Gov call it a budget and I laugh because they have Not had one for how many years. IRRESPONSIBLE LIARS ChILDREN. In men’s bodies

    • I think they spend a fair bit of time in women’s bodies, too, if’n I follow the biology of it all, lol

    • Totally agree on the straight upness of it – and since all the Fed budgets are a lie because a) they don’t reflect debt service which means the REAL debt with the interest is on the order of %75 trillion (which Treasury is no longer making so “available” to the peeps – and then with the Off budget crap…total freakingd rehab economics, no question.
      But, while she blows, we make a few cents and slide ’em into the back pocker not and then, lol…

    • Yeah -nice to see another media (but not the nhysterial hand-wringing ad pimping MSM) gets it.

      My pet theory is that when the first “shut down” happened in 1995 was that slippery willy cut a deal with the deep state bureaucrats – the unfireables. They would get a week or two every year via a “budget shutdown” and in return, they would play partisans and lead the country where bil and hil wanted to take us… hasn’t stopped the charade ors the second-vacations with pay since…

  8. The best piece I read and I don’t believe its bond liquidations going into equities is that the rest of the worlds central banks are still in the midst of enormous QE and the weak dollar is sucking all the global cash into the US – hence the enormous flows for the time being …….

  9. Personal budget strategy. Make more, pay off more. Pay off all debt and don’t get more debt. Stash and save for the slow times. Which haven’t come yet.

    Thinking about working a second job. I’m Andy and I’m a workaholic. Lol

    • I have to agree with you Andy. There’s time for thinking, working, and meditating. You can do two at a time, but not three. I should write a budget, but it would take a half a page, and I know the numbers already. It’s good to be debt free, and I’m sure you will be soon. My biggest expense besides dental is supplies for projects.

      I live cheaply, because sophistication is not my thing. Beyond the necessities, the important things can’t be bought with money. Two problems are where to stash your liquidity and what’s worth spending it on?

      • I think a budget(mental or written) is a good guideline, but I do believe the real value is to keep a spreadsheet of actual expenses. That’s where trends can actually be seen.

      • I use the kiss method I take my electric bill that comes on you know and on the back of it after I punch into my bank statement online I write down and then put all the expenses as they incur I don’t use the checkbook but I write all everything down on the back of my electric bill piece of paper and that’s filed into a container so at any time for years and years I can see what I have spent on paper on the back of my electric bill.
        . But each month as it passes I keep the electric bill in other graph composition books or I can just put like 2017 to 2018.
        But the main thing is it’s there you put it somewhere where you recognize it everyday and if you do use the internet and put something in there that puts a negative balance against your bank account you just write it on the back of your electric bill statement. And after each month expires you take the electric bill with the expenditures on the back and put it into a container.
        Now if you have a more extravagant need for assets liabilities and net worth then you could probably do what everyone else is suggesting

  11. “paying Feds for NOT WORKING is why this BS continues.”

    The people need to vote in a provision that if congress decides to do this that their pay be withheld as well. Of course they would have to approve it..then get the SC to decide that its unconstitutional to withhold their pay. Similar to the decision that it was unconditional to limit lobbyist influence and gifts.
    mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/us/politics/supreme-court-ruling-on-campaign-contributions.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

    How to live on a budget????
    How do you live without one??
    I couldn’t survive if I tried to swing it without one. In our household we don’t have an unlimited amount of income. So a budget is an absolute necessity. The set in stone expenses and then the ones you can adjust with limits. Then the luxury expenses(cable,phone,dining out,gifts,some insurance policies.( I know that is a catch 22 but a huge expense here. All told abot 2500.00 a month that is like gambling. I’m betting that something will happen their betting it won’t odds are on the house usually. Most insurances have a limit of claims before they cut you from the herd)
    A budget is an absolute necessity.

    • I quit using quicken the day they took total control.
      All transactions are now downloaded to their company servers in an Asian country. I do not want anyone having that much control or information about my banking.

      • I use the Expense IQ app on my tablet. I paid $50 for a lifetime license. It tracks all my expenses and shows me my net worth daily. I am not much for budgets so every 3 months, I have a net worth meeting with myself (wife doesn’t care to attend) & check on the amount & % of increase or decrease and adjust my spending accordingly. Since I have retired, a decrease is usually related to dental or medical expenses.

  12. Wow… Watching the movie Deep Water Horizon…intense.. Now I have to discuss it with my new friend that wore a hat as a deep water engineer on drilling platforms to get his take on the movie

  13. A couple of questions – assuming that the DACA situation fell apart and the former children raised in the United States were (mainly) returned to Mexico – isn’t there a possibility that they wouldn’t be accepted by that country (physically and emotionally)?

    After all, these people were raised as U.S. ‘citizens’ and think and behave as such. How do you think we’d react if like a half million (being generous) ‘sort of’ Americans were dumped on us?

    I see some serious problems with this idea . . .

    • I think a reasonable compromise is in order. DACA folks might get a serious vetting and then some perhaps stay on a merit basis, with the best and brightest(or most hardworking) getting a limited green card. It would either lead to permanent residency without possibility of citizenship, or perhaps a path to limited citizenship without voting rights. I cannot see allowing DACA folks to vote – ever. There would be a quota of DACA folks allowed to remain, and the selection would be on the merits. Any crimes or other ill behavior would disqualify. That includes participation in violent demonstrations.

      • That is dangerous, this ‘semi-citizen’ idea – I look at a country like Israel where there are people who are living in their country, but are not allowed citizenship – this makes radicals!

        (Totally different situation but remember when ‘Native Americans’ were not considered citizens?)

        So what happens to the children of the DACA people?

        Either one can be a citizen or not, no middle status!

  14. Dear Mr. Ure,

    History shall record that Dr. Epp’s final retweet prior to removal by NASA from the next ISS mission was pic.twitter.com/cv9ORUKebA

    One imagines a slow first stage burn is underway at Langley. Sometimes Potus speaks softly?

  15. January 20th 9 p.m. through midnight of January 20th.
    Using the psychic dictionary came up with the word blood which is part of the using the psychic dictionary came up with the word BLOOD. which is in the definition of the word MESTIZO.

    I associated the word blood would like blood letting in the streets that’s the time to buy when there’s blood in the streets.
    21st 4:30 a.m. dog wakes me up one of the dogs once to go out.
    I remember my dream was seeing a key in the backseat behind the driver’s seat.
    That was something in the passenger front seat that I had to get to through the drivers door and there was something in the floorboard of the passenger front side had to take something and not down the cobwebs.
    This is two parts I haven’t got to the third part yet but the first part was the blood which means it’s going down second part was I had to reach through and go down on the floor board to get something that was the key ingredient which means it was going down.

    The 20th at 11 p.m. Bitcoin was at 12500 on the 21st at 4:30 a.m. it was down to 11800.

    Looking at the news last night they allowed to Fisa to become public and they claim that’s why the market went down.

    Now the third part that hasn’t been clarified yet whether it’s actually true is that today’s bitcoin price at midnight tonight will be lower than what it was last night if it does then we got 1 2 3 going on is here there’s something else there but anyway get the message you have the ability to see things happen and you also have the ability to control things to it just puts you in a different line away from everybody else.
    I drank some for coffee at 4:35 o’clock in the morning with back to sleep woke up at 11 a.m. and it went I woke up it went down to the bottom I had like a5 minute window I could have bought at the very bottom what’s the I’m very slow I’m lazy and slow so I did not make it in time to buy some more.

    I know what I have to do in order to make this work everyday but I can’t I probably won’t.

    Now for some more woo woo stuff here you say I was told I don’t know 18 years ago that a person can predict what the general market will do like a towel Jones because what you’re doing is your punching in or clicking into the mask consciousness of everyone across the planet that’s investing in it so you have the ability to do that its more pronounce compare to if you invest in one stock.

    The stock market though is manipulated very manipulated buy a few people at the top.

    Bitcoin is not so much so it’s everyone out there now you’re going to start saying hey you can’t do that because you’re hurting people are you’re taking advantage of people that are buying it at the top I say no you’re not because in one year’s time if you can make 5 to 10 times your money that you invest in one year but

    at some. During that year you have to sell because you need some money for emergency.

    you’ve made a profit you may not have made the 1000% profit but maybe you made a hundred percent profit that’s why Bitcoin is going to set people free.

    and another concept is if you were to take and give everybody cell phones which Microsoft was wanting to do I think or some of the other places across the planet so everyone’s connected and you gave everyone a $50 Bitcoin piece.
    And in your one year you would be guaranteed that it would go up and if you wanted to sell part of it you’d still have the initial part that you put in.
    So people are dying and people are being born as you have more and more people that are dying and nobody knows that these people have the money or the passwords to that but you have more people coming in and they’re being trained to use this we have a system that will continually increase in value to the point the world the people in the world will become rich to the point they never have to actually worried about anyting they’ll still be plenty of food they’ll still be plenty of electricity and heat transportation and free energy because we’re moving in that direction that is the future my re-creators.

    May all beings be lovingly fulfilled so be it

    • I forgot to add that I intentionally before I went to sleep last night asked what the Bitcoin Market would be doing at the next midnight not that midnight but the next day so I haven’t proven that yet but during that. It did go down and it’s like being hypnotized they say when you’re hypnotized it can last about a weekend you know a couple days so you have the ability to see what’s going to happen for a couple days anyway then after that you have to read a surgery your self hypnosis to understand what’s going to happen for the next 2 days but there are rare people out there who can see way into the future I’m just going into the one to do the one 24-hour. Into the future

      • Yeah too many naps while I’m getting old but yes .
        I used to use the Quicken books when it first came out a long time ago in fact it came on my computer or 1998 I think it was it was really good except for the fact that it made you spend more time doing things with it and trying to formulate all kinds of stuff and so like I said I make it simple the back side of my electric bill don’t worry about it I make more than I spend so I don’t worry about it

  17. George, WHAT is a check register? I seem to remember those things from decades ago. Today I do most buying online, other than groceries, materials and private sales. Yes, I can use a card, and do, but not for Craigslist or thrift shops. Ultimately, all that data needs to go in a spreadsheet to be complete.

    I still write checks for taxes and O2 cylinder rental. That’s about it.

    • He is joking Mike.

      Coin desk changed their chart dats and removed the $9300 price drop from their graph. I got a screen shot of it and a book mark of that dats point. But they removed it from their graph.

      Talk about market manipulation.

  18. You have Mail George. My daughter changed my name and avatar on my email. Lol so it’s under super gamer.

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