Household Budgets

[Al_Wa]

I put all my monthly bills in a hat and shake it up real good. One by one I draw them out and write a check. When the check balance is zero I quit writing. If my creditors start getting nasty I explain the process and if they don't start being nicer, I will stop putting their name in the hat.

[Pat]

My father-in-law ( a real rocket scientist who worked with Von Braun) bought me a book that was put out by Esquire magazine. It was titled " What Every Young Man Should Know." Among the many pearls of wisdom was a hard times bill delaying method where you make out all the checks and address all the envelopes but put checks in the envelopes at random. The recipients will likely NOT get together to sort things out and will assume you made a good faith mistake and only turned two mailings around. Even if the butcher (who got the candle stick makers check) tries to swap, it won't work because the baker got the butcher's check and so forth. This, of course is just a delaying tactic. I mention this mostly for humor.

Budgeting: My wife is a retired Budget Analyst with 30 years financial experience. She seems to spend a fair amount of time entering info into her Excell spreadsheets from which she can sometimes answer my questions regarding how much goes for x, y, and z or how much is available to build the house we are building or whatever. I realize it may be too late for you to find and court a budget analyst but it is one option.

Actually, we share the financial planning. I am heavy in the strategic planning (long time horizon stuff) She asserts herself some in the midrange planning (usually less than a year time horizon) and we both are over our waders in operational planning (day to day not to exceed a week time horizon)

As far as debt ratios, how much to reserve for various contingencies, (what about long term care) we muddle through with a little less planning than the planners but have made out for nearly 40 years of marriage. I'll know a lot more about budgeting in two years as the surplus of money we are sitting on from the sale of our previous house (and a lot more) will have been spent builing the current house project and I will be trying to get by on retirement pay.

Patrick