Good with my Money???

In an effort to organize my thoughts and finances, I have decided to record them here at Watch the Pennies..

People have always told me that I am good with money. Can you be considered good with money when you have the following debts?

1. $15,000 - Student Loan
2. $20,000 - Car Loan
3. $15,000 - Credit Card Balance

I don't think so. Maybe I am being too hard on myself. I have never had a late payment. I have never defaulted on any debt. No... I still don't think that I have been good with my money.

The one thing that I do have going for me is something that my father did for me when I first started to have income and expenses. He set me up on a simple budget that I still use today, almost 20 years later. I feel that this is a very simple budgeting system that I am on. It is similar to the famous envelope system. Instead of budgeting monthly, I budget weekly. I take all of my monthly expenses and divide them by 4 (I get paid weekly). This will let me know how much I need to sock away each pay period in order to pay the bills at the end of the month. By using this system, there will be 4 "extra" pay periods throughout the year. This is how I came up with that...

4 pay periods per month multiplied by 12 months (4 x 12 = 48)

Since there are 52 weeks in every year, 52 - 48 = 4

These four "extra" pay periods for me this year are in March, June, September and December. I base my weekly pay periods by Saturday because this is the day of the week that I budget my paycheck and do all of my banking.

Now what can I do with this "extra" money? Anything that I want! Sometimes I will just use it as "fun money" and go to hell with myself. Dinner, movies, vacations... Usually I will put it towards my reducing my debt.

I have tried to budget monthly but it just doesn't work for me. I figure that since I am living paycheck to paycheck, I might as well budget that way to. Budgeting this way I know that the money will be there when I need it.

Here is a list of the budgeting categories that I currently use.

1. Mortgage
2. Student Loan
3. Car Loan
4. Credit Card #1
5. Credit Card #2
6. Cable/Internet/Phone (package deal)
7. Cell Phones (going to change plan soon...too expensive)
8. Car Insurance
9. Newspaper Delivery
10. Electric
11. Water
12. Oil
13. Food Shopping
14. Gas
15. Spending Money
16. Gifts (birthdays & such)

I realize that I could use more categories such as clothing and home repairs but I can take care of those with those "extra" pay periods that I spoke of earlier. Later this week (tonight if I get a chance) I will create and post a link to a Google spreadsheet showing my budget.