A Question from a Fan (Ha ha ha - I'm so funny to me)

Stacy has left a new comment on your post "The Other Half":

"I'm trying to figure how your budget is counted. Cash balance is cash you still have in an envelope for that one particular thing. Savings balance is money sitting in the bank for that one particular thing, and should grow big enough to pay it when the final bill come in. Then the list after Take-home pay is how you are splitting up the money coming in (your budget), whether it's going to be cash balance or savings balance. Right??? Is this the Dave Ramsey method?And Woo on the credit card!!"

Stacy, you've got it! Except it's not particularly the Dave Ramsey method. He has great info on getting out of debt, setting up an emergency fund, and encourages budgeting, but this was a budget we came up with on an as-needed basis.

One of the best financial decisions we ever made is what we call our "2nd register method." We keep a second (actually more, but for the sake of simplicity here) checkbook register. All of our money is actually in one checking account, but we keep two registers and in the second we have categories for "Water Bill," "Christmas," etc., so that we can easily save for these items by taking the money out of our daily use register and despositing it in these categories. All of this only happens on paper, the money actually all stays in the same account.

Does that make any sense at all? Probably not.