Finding Financial Freedom with You Need A Budget

Written by Dustin on July 4, 2010 - 6 Comments
Finances & Careers

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans! I hope you are enjoying some fun family time over this long weekend and remembering all those who fought and continue to fight to preserve the awesome freedoms that we enjoy each day.

We are opting for more time indoors than usual this holiday weekend while we anxiously await the arrival of our third child sometime in the next week or two. Thank God for air conditioning!

When I think of our family’s own freedom, the thought of finances always comes to mind. As you may be aware, we paid off a LOT of debt and now enjoy much more financial freedom, and that carries through to all aspects of our marriage and family life.

I recently shot another video where I discuss the number one cause of divorce in America and why I think You Need A Budget is such a great tool for addressing this important problem. And here’s another reason to celebrate: I just purchased a new video camera so this is the last really low-quality video post you’ll see from me!

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, and if you’d like to see all of my Engaged Marriage videos (some of which don’t find their way to the blog) please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

If you can’t see the video, just click here: You Need A Budget Review: Married Money Management

Thanks for your continued support!

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Technorati Tags: Finances, Household Management, Product Review, Video

Comments

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Cori Padgett

July 5, 2010 at 11:30 am

Ha ha..nice to see you on a video, it’s the first one I’ve seen of yours! lol And you got me with that post you did on YNAB before, I ended up buying it about a week or two later. I LOVE it, and I’ve been tracking every dollar spent in June to see where it all goes (yikes…we won’t even talk about that!) and it’s been a real eye opener.

My only conundrum is it’s hard to allocate a job for every dollar, because I never know exactly how much is coming in each month. It can fluctuate quite a bit. Got any ideas for getting around that?

C

Reply
- Dustin
  
  July 5, 2010 at 10:51 pm
  
  Thanks, Cori! I’m glad the video didn’t turn your stomach so much that you weren’t able to finish it.
  
  I’m really glad to hear you are enjoying YNAB, I love it too!
  
  On the irregular income issue, the YNAB help menu has some good information. Also, once you get a month ahead (which YNAB helps you do as keep moving forward), it’s not really a problem because you’ll be doing August’s budget based on July’s income so there are no unknowns on the income side. This is one of favorite things about this software.
  
  Before you get a month ahead, my advice is too look back at your last six months of income (or whatever you have records for) and pick your *worst* month. Use that amount to set your basic budget with each month and then as you (hopefully) get money above that amount, you adjust your budget to apply it to your next highest priority, more money=the next priority, etc. until all those big consulting and freelancing checks are spent on paper.
  
  Reply
  - Cori Padgett
    
    July 13, 2010 at 8:19 pm
    
    Hey Dustin! Sorry for the delay in response, been killer busy the last couple of weeks. That’s an excellent suggestion regarding taking my worst month, I hadn’t even though of doing it that way. So Thanks for the new idea!
    
    C
    
    Reply
    - Dustin
      
      July 17, 2010 at 10:48 pm
      
      Cool! I hope that helps, Cori.
      
      Reply
Bill Dwight at FamZoo

July 6, 2010 at 11:23 am

Hey Dustin, love your mission and enjoyed your video. For those who have been married for a while and have kids: you might be interested in what we have at FamZoo – it’s a site that helps parents teach their kids good money habits through hands-on practice. Creating a simple budget is one of the areas we encourage. The simple budgeting capability is described in this post:

http://blog.famzoo.com/2010/06/teach-your-child-how-to-make-and-manage.html

We were featured in the NY Times personal finance blog yesterday:

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/a-new-tool-to-teach-children-about-money/

On a separate note, it would be cool to see you do some screencasts of how you recommend using budgeting products like YNAB – video is such a great medium. We use ScreenFlow for the Mac at FamZoo and I highly recommend it. Easy and powerful to use. (I’m not affiliated with them in any way – just really enjoy their product.)

Keep up the good work!

Cheers,
Bill

Reply
- Dustin
  
  July 17, 2010 at 10:49 pm
  
  Thanks so much, Bill! Video is definitely something I’d like to utilize more on this site. In some cases, screencasts would come in handy, and I’ve heard Camtasia recommended pretty strongly for us old-school PC folks.
  
  Reply