Do people use a separate budget for cash flow (CC payment against income) while tracking CC purchases separately? I have one budget that tracks payments only, regardless of spend. I’m looking for a better way.
I track CC purchases individually, assigning them to categories. If I stay within budget for all my categories, then I know what my CC payment will be (for this example let’s say $1400).
For cash flow I have a little table in my spreadsheet that is per paycheque and I list how much is going where from each pay (I forcast 8 in advance). And each paycheque has half my and CC payment on it ($700). Even though my CC statements are actually half last month and half this month, I stay within my budgets so I can confidently say what my payments will be each statement. My statements come out on the 12th, so the paycheque before that I take the second half of the payment off. I plan these out a year in advance.
If I purchase anything extra on my CC that is outside of my normal monthly budgets (say a sinking fund purchase) I immediately transfer that amount to my CC from the fund it came from. For example if I booked a flight for $400, right after I booked it I would make a CC payment of $400 from my travel fund.
Not CC payments or other cash flow is something I monitor.
No.
We set aside money in our household budget for all income and spending; I don’t spell out how I make purchases. A $150 utility bill that has been paid with cash, a credit card, or another method remains a $150 utility bill.
It’s not that I don’t care about liabilities; on the contrary, I do. To assess our net worth, we generate a quarterly balance sheet that includes current liabilities like my credit card.
However, we don’t share the cost of payment methods, nor does our budget concern itself with them.
What issue are you trying to resolve by seeking an alternative to your current course of action?
I monitor solely the purchases. Whether I pay with cash or a credit card doesn’t really matter because my goal is still to spend less than I earn.