I'm in charge of the budgeting here. I do mine in the computer, but mine is rather complicated though. I have a quirk that everything has to be separated entirely so I had to convince my computer that I have something like 20 checking accounts to keep everything separate. In reality we have two checking accts and one savings acct but my cpu doesn't know that.

To start I figured out the avg for each utility, rent, car payments, cable etc per month then divide that by 2 which is when we get paid (bi-weekly). I then took the last year of our pay and averaged what we bring home per payday so I have a starting point to budget.

I have my cpu set up so each utility, expense, etc is a separate catagory (or as a checking acct so the computer thinks). That way I know if the electric bill is higher one month than what we've budgeted I'm not raiding from the heat bill to cover it without actively switching the money over in the cpu. This way I can track each individual expense vs the budget. Yes it's a huge pain in the butt, however I just can't reconcile myself to just lumping all utilities/expenses together, it's too easy to overspend money that was alloted for something else. This method is slow and complicated but it's worked for me for many, many years and it's much easier since I have the cpu (in the old days I had to write everything down on a tablet and keep updating the figures each payday).

I don't change my budgeted allowance for each bill every payday unless we have a shortage because of a missed workday or something drastic. So sometimes in the summer my heat fund shows in excess of $300, so I just let it build up, continuing to put away in that fund each payday, then when the winter heat bills come in I don't have to worry about being able to pay them or having to worry about being able to turn up my heat because of cost. Does that make sense? Same theory goes for all my utilities/expenses.

Because I figure my budget on a 4 week month, sometimes we come up with extra because some months have 5 weeks in them. We normally let that ride and use it for unexpected rate increases or if we have an unexpected expense we'll sometimes pull that extra out and use it for repairs, medical bills etc.

Some catagories only get $2.50 each pay period some go much higher, but each one is figured on it's own and put into the acct accordinly.

I pay our savings acct. first before anything else, then rent is next, and so on based on how necessary each catagory is in case of a pay shortage. Things on the top of my cheat sheet get paid first, things on the bottom (including our spending money) get paid last and may be shorted if funds are low that payday.

We each have an 'allowance' so to speak for spending money, both of us get the same amount. Sometimes it's a measly $15 to last two weeks sometimes as high as $35 each. Out of that spending money is what we use for things like video rentals, haircuts, clothes (barring a major need for new work clothes or something), most entertainment things (exception is our summer nights at the dirt racing track, that we actually figure into the budget as an expense). If we run out of spending money before the next payday we're S.O.L. for personal things.

Household things are a different catagory and kept in the checking acct also accounted for in the budget. This catagory covers things like new faucet, rugs, new garbage can, home decor, garden/yard things, tools, etc. If we run out and absolutely have to have an item for repair that cannot wait then we make a joint decision before using from the emergency fund.

The emergency fund started out as a way to avoid bank fees. At that time our bank charged a service fee for any balance below $300, and at the time we had a very low balance most times. So we socked money away until we had $350 for a cushion and just forget about it. If we really need something we can use from that fund but it has to be put back first before going on with the rest of the budget, even in payments to ourselves, until the full $350 is back in there. This avoids us having to use the actual savings acct. for things like this.

Some of my money is not in the checking acct, it's in cash put into envelopes I keep in the safe. Grocery, Gas, Cats, and Dirt track money is all in envelopes. When the envelope is empty there's no more to spend until next payday. It's easier to keep from going over budget that way for us than if it was just numbers in a checking acct. Most of the time the checkbook is locked in the safe until we need it, we don't carry it on us when we go out unless we know we're making a purchase that has to come out of that book first. I do always carry a credit card though for emergencies.

We put all our change in a jar several times a week and when we get enough rolls we cash it in at the bank and put it in our 'mad money' fund. Mad money is for unexpected, sudden entertainment things (like last minute invitations for bowling, movies and whatnot with friends). Also anything we make at our garage sales, or finding money on the ground goes in this fund.

Our grocery money is probably the hardest one to corral expense wise. I don't separate the actual food from cleaning supplies, laundry soap, sponges, etc so it all comes out of the grocery money. We currently budget $160-170 per every two weeks for the two of us. It's way high and I've been actively working on getting that lower.

In saving money (particularly on grocery) I've been using more generic products, we stopped throwing away the plastic silverwear and rewash it instead until it breaks, (I draw the line at washing out ziplock bags and baggies though, I reuse them for cleaning the cat boxes instead). I water down the dishsoap in the bottle, and the liquid handsoap (which we are in the process of switching back to bar soap). We pretty much only buy on sale items if at all possible and stock up like crazy when there's a good sale. I have a membership with Sam's club which we go to about once every 3-5 months (yes I have a budget catagory for that $20 per payday). I have a price book where I write all our common purchases in it and it's in a binder that the grocery money/sam's club money is kept in. In that price book I have the date, store name, item, size, total price, and price per unit listed. That way if I'm at another store I'll KNOW if I'm actually getting a good deal or if the sizes are different (like bulk) I'll really know if it's a bargain or not.

For saving money on other expenses I just bought a new low flow showerhead with a pause button to help save water. You can put it on pause while soaping up and it uses far less water but you don't have to turn faucet on/off or reset your temp. It only cost $14 at Wally's World. It should save us significanly on the water bill and the hot water heating costs.

I also turned down the hot water tank a smidge, we don't run hot water for things like washing hands (takes forever for our faucet to finally get hot water up there). I wash my laundry on warm or cold water (all cold rinses) and when it's nice out I hang my laundry on the clothesline. I buy cheap dryer sheets and tear them in half when I need one.

We have several small power saving nite lights in the house so we don't have to keep turning lights on/off or leaving a light on to see when we walk around at night. The only exception is there is a small florescent light in the kitchen we leave on when we're awake at night so we don't step on cats who like to lounge in the walkway. We switched all our lights to the CFL bulbs that we could.

I constanly price check various expenses to see if switching companies is cheaper. Next week we are changing cable services to save $11 a month. We don't have movie channels, PPV or digital packages with our cable.

I switched internet services to a cheaper one with DSL and was able to ditch the home phone line and ADDED another cell phone to my package total savings with those switches was $20 per month.

We don't subscribe to magazines/newspapers/video places etc. If we want news we turn on the tv or look it up online. If we want videos we mostly get them free at the library (exception being for Christmas and Thanksgiving then we rent).

We each have a Christmas Club acct at the bank that we make payments to and get sent a check each year around Halloween for Christmas gifts so we don't overspend.

Sad to say the only area I still haven't sucessfully gotten budgeted in is vacations. We don't take very many and they're very skimpy cheap as it is (we rustic tent camp), but usually that has to come from a combo of spending money/mad money/some savings. But the most we've ever spent on a vacation even several states away for 12 days was $600, but much of that was used from a bonus hubby got from work. Our avg. vac. costs about $350 not counting gas because that's already budgeted.

Anyways I could go on all night, but I think that's more than plenty to answer your question. And just so ppl know I'm not 'green' I'm just cheap, but not so cheap that we don't have our luxuries, just downsized luxuries is all. lol I would be LOST without my budget and get into serious debt if not for it.