We would like to know about how you plan your expenses today, and how can Jupiter help you with the same.
By budget planning, we mean planning how much of your salary you want to spend on your regular expenses, how much for leisure spending, how much to invest, how much to keep in emergency funds, and so on.
Could you share the following:
How do you do your budget planning e.g. on Excel sheets, pen and paper, through any apps, or mental calculations?
How many hours a month do they spend on budget planning?
What is the biggest challenge you face in budget planning?
I plan at the beginning of the month, get a panic attack every few days and then recheck and replan. Around 1-2 hours/week.
Keeping track if I am actually spending within the budget. The categories I have in the notes app, I have to manually enter the expenses, which I don’t always do due to various reasons.
I use money manager for most of day to day costs (jupiter calculates digital transactions only and most of my transactions from my hometown are via liquid cash like transportation, shops without qr code to pay etc…).
All my budgeting and analysis is done here
Then for certain events, i use google docs. Calculates the income, expenditures, payment modes, loans etc… Will be added (eg. i have a pageless word document with all my college expenses, loans i took, costs, monthly expense, categories… Everything arranged in different tables and an event of family reunion) Usefull when i need to share this to my parents or someone else and need an overview
I am going to check out excel
// i would like my money manager to create certain events and collaborate with my friends on adding expenses and revenue.
One time excel sheet effort that plans out Wants, Needs and Savings, and their respective components and amounts.
Jupiter pots every month for many of those components and move money into them, and withdraw only when needed.
Eg:
Broadband - ₹ 2,000
Medical - ₹ 5,000
I only withdraw money from broadband pot on the 9th of every month, as that is my billing date.
It helps me not to over-spend.
So a budgeting interface directly linked to pots can be useful. There should be an option to select which pots are to be considered for the calculation.
I use Wallet app by budgetbakers for expenses tracking n budgeting.
It takes daily about 5 to 10 minutes.
Biggest challenge for me is accounting for shared expenses and unplanned expenses.
I have not linked my salary account to Jupiter. But I have made a 60:20:20 rule.
That is, i know my monthly expenses which takes upto 60% of my salary at the moment and obviously I am giving myself some room without micromanaging everything. 20% goes directly to my SIP and rest 20% for my short term goals. Obviously this is customised to me and is not perfect, so i re-iterate everything about every 2 months or so.
And no, no excel for me. Atleast for now
Yes. I have divided this 60% into 2 separate categories.
Fixed expenses: that includes rent, lpg, maid service, CC bill, edu loan emi
Variables: this contain restocking my pantry one a month during sales online, electricity bill, perishable food, etc.
This is purposely an above moderate category budget as it covers changing gas prices and inflation, unplanned expenses in this category.
Hopefully i get enough increments so that i can keep reducing this category.
This is not perfect but hope it helps
To find solution for those 2 I have Bookmarked this Post
I use Money Manager but bad comsidered budget baler earlier. but seen its a paid app and its interface is not minimalistic(like to see everything in a single page)
