Easy Budger for First (or Fourth) Year Teachers

Congratulations! You've landed your first teaching job. In addition to the hustle and bustle of decorating your classroom, learning your curriculum, meeting your students, and getting acquainted with your community, you have BILLS. When I landed my first teaching job, it was my first time living in an apartment by myself with a car payment, student loans payments, and paying every utility separately. It was incredibly overwhelming!

The best thing I did was create a budget system. Why create a budget system, do you ask? Here are some huge benefits:

• Reduce "pay day" spending sprees.
• See EXACTLY where your money is going.
• Save more money!
• It only takes 10-30 minutes a week.
• This is flexible and can be adjusted however you need it to be.

After some trial and error, and about three years later, I have streamlined my system. I have been using this system for about six months, and since the simplicity of it has worked extremely well for me, I want to share it.

The best part about it is that you only need three supplies:

• 1 double pocket, 3-ring paper folder
• Loose leaf lined paper
• 1 pen

It is not cute, but it is efficient, the materials are probably somewhere where you could start this RIGHT NOW, and it it something you can stick to. Have those three things? Let's get started.

Here is an overview of what the folder looks like before I break it down into steps.

I use one sheet of paper for every two-week pay period. This could work for any pay period length. I fold the sheet of paper in half. On the left, I have my projected spending, and on the right, I have my actual spending that I fill in as I actually spend and pay bills. Ideally the night before I get paid, I fill out the entire left column, so it looks like this.

To create my left column, I look back at my online banking and credit card transactions from the same dates in the previous month. I also look ahead on my social calendar. This weekend, I needed to budget for a wedding I'm going to.

My "grocery" column is all of my spending money for a pay period. Every week, I pull out about $100 cash because I am crazy old school, and that is all the money I have for food, things I need, going out to eat, and entertainment. Yes, I live an incredibly frugal life!

Pro Tip: For electric and natural gas bills that vary month to month, always OVERestimate what you think a bill is going to be, and use your previous month bills to help you figure out what you think it will be. This greatly reduces your risk of surprises. This is why I always keep all of my bills in chronological order in the left pocket, like this.

For those of you who do most of your bills paperless (I am about half and half right now), you can  look at your online banking to estimate what you will pay next month. I have been doing this for a while, so I can mentally predict quite easily what they will be, but in the beginning, I liked to look back at my online banking.

At the end of a two-week pay period, my sheet of paper usually looks like this:

I like using this pay period as an example because it shows that overestimating my bills actually helped me be able to put more money in my savings than I was originally planning. For the win! (Disclaimer: This does not happen often.)

Now life happens, so you may notice I've added my extras at the end on the right side. Fundraisers, birthdays, and holidays mess up a budget, but are still extremely important. The most important thing is to not be too hard on yourself if you can't add to your savings one pay period! Just see where your money is going and try again next pay period.

That's it! I honestly only spend about 10 minutes on this per week anymore, and I feel so in control of my finances because of this. I don't make much, but I know exactly where every penny I have goes. It's ugly, but it's practical.

What are your budgeting tricks? I'm always looking for new ideas and ways to make this practice more valuable, so please share below!