Share your best budgeting hack. 🗣

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Edit: Congratulations to @bininishere for winning this contest

Continue to share your ideas with us on this thread

Summary

December’s right around the corner and that means it’s time to start budgeting for the holiday season! Whether you want to buy gifts for your family, take a vacation with friends, or just want to spoil yourself a little bit for getting through 2020 (iPhone 12 anyone?) — chances are you have thought about how to budget your money for all of it!

And if you have a trusty budgeting system or handy tips that help you save up for whatever you want — it’s your time to shine (and maybe even win something shiny).

How, you ask?
Tell us about your budgeting system, tips or tricks. Whether it’s a jar of coins or a meticulously planned out Excel sheet, we want to know!

Apart from getting to boast about your budgeting skills, you also have a chance to win:

  1. A shiny Jupiter Metal Edition card :snowflake:
  2. Some Neat space-age Jupiter merch :rocket:
  3. A 30 min. session with literally anyone from Jupiter (all the way up to our founder!) :star_struck:

I want in! What’s next?

Just 2 things:

  1. image to this topic, describing your budgeting system or sharing your budgeting tips/hacks! (Feel free to upload/link to whatever resources or apps you use!)
  2. image Copy the link to your reply, share it with your friends, and ask them to comment or like – first is preferred, second is the bare minimum. So push ‘em.
  3. Every time someone comments or likes your response, you score points!

Oh great a points system :confused:
Well, we can’t let it be subjective. But we’re keeping things simple:

  1. A comment from a New User on your reply will get you 3x points
  2. A comment from a Community Champions will get you 2x points
  3. Every like on your reply will add 1 point
  4. Every reply counts as one entry with 1 point (Which means you can choose to share multiple tips & hacks)

Oh BTW: Someone might have the same budgeting hack as you, so don’t waste a second more; get cracking!

Deadline: 30th November

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I use a product by ICICI which is IwishFD : You can create a goal based fixed deposit which can be broken when the goal has reached .

Some other pointers could be :
1.One of my close friend uses a work sheet to plan vacation and budgets
2.People also have another bank account( a secondary one) which gives high interest rates just for some goals
3. Nowadays people also uses apps which round offs their investment and uses the left to invest to gain a corpus

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I’m not great with managing my finances yet. However, one hack I learnt while saving up in college that I still use is setting up weekly goals. If I was saving up for a trip I would figure out the total cost, and divide it into weeks. Each week I had a savings goal that I had to maintain and that would help me reach my overall goal faster.

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I stick to the basics. I had heard of the 50 30 20 rule ages ago and I still use it till date. For those of you who don’t know what that is - I divide my income into 3 parts. 50% of my income goes towards my monthly needs such as rent, groceries, commute, etc. 30% of my income is spent on my wants like shopping, restaurants, etc. And lastly, the remaining 20% of my income is for savings. This has helped me and overtime the 20% really adds up! Would recommend this method to others because it gives me the freedom to enjoy buying the things I want, but still be responsible :blush:

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I started very late with investments but Boy I am glad I did.

I invest in mutual funds through Paytm money and what I like is the gamification of the whole investment part.
I feel good looking at how my portfolio is growing, the XIRR, & other figures. If I hadn’t put money on there, I would have spent all of it on gadgets. I have 5 phones, multiple bluetooth headsets, headphones, TWS, smart speakers and smart watches and even other smart gadgets & I am always tempted to get more.

I mean you can’t use 4 Google homes and 2 Amaxon Echos together, can you? :sob::sob:

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Hi Sneh,
Thanks for the question. The hack I use is quite complicated, but it’s one of the best standards.
Even after the budgeting, my model helps to have in lakhs balance in the investment basket.
Happy to chat individually or the best option as a phone call.

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Hi Community,

I am maintaining a simple investment template since 12 years; I have attached it for you all.

I have also created legends which can help you further on the columns.

I would await your feedback and some love if you found it efficient and helpful - or may be good.

  • This is the very basic template I am maintaining as I am of view point that investment [whatever the type] should be simple and it should earn for you.
  • You can add more columns to this; eg. Column which gives you XIRR [Formula is there in Excel to calculate XIRR]
  • Pitching your returns against Inflation is very very important, e. if Inflation is going at 6% and your portfolio is giving anything less than 6% than you are not earning anything [Crude way of saying you don’t know investment at all]
  • As I said earlier, I keep my investments simple; so I calculate inflation as per Govt. referendum but you can make this more complex as per the commodities which relate to you eg. inflation of onion, tomato + inflation of sin products like tobacco & alcohol, cost of living, etc.
  • I have one column “Portfolio %tage”, because I always make sure the share in my portfolio is atleast 8%+; so that I can get the efficient or optimum benefit of share’s valuation.
  • Don’t make crowd as far as shares are concerned - generally, if you have 8-10 shares or on the max 15 then you have covered almost all the broader industries and leader shares.
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Hi Jupiter fam,

We all know budgeting works best when we have a clear understanding of the nature and frequency of our inflows & outflows.

Let be warned this post is a lengthy one, but I feel when it comes to personal budgeting hacks, along with the conventional cash flows, we should also say about the unsecured credits and how to use them smartly for extra income.

Here I am sharing my fixed flows break ups, tools/apps I use to manage my money and the variable flows from credit cards

So to start with, here are my flows:

INFLOWS

85% Salary
15% Variable Trading & Misc Income

OUTFLOWS/usage

40% Equity trading & MF investment -SIP on 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th & 25th of every month
15% Rent & Misc expenses
15% Personal Loan & Credit Card repayment
10% Garbs & Household stuffs
20% Cash in Savings account

In order to effectively manage and budget these flows I rely upon different mobile apps and tools.

TOOLS/APPS

Walnut – For keeping track of my expenses

Have been using this app for the last 5 years. It auto picks the payment details from SMS and classify according to the nature of expenses. Additionally we can also use hashtags(eg: #creditcard, #zomato) for easy filtering and ready references.

Walnut for iOS doesn’t support expense tracking

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Walnut website

Freebird – Virtual loan book

I have given some decent amount of money to my friends. Saying so, there can be late repayments, may be even small sized partial repayments or to the extend of not paying it back! Freebird helps in tracking these irregular loan flows.

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Freebird Android

CRED – For budgeting & managing my credit card expenses

Only started to use recently, CRED gives us reminders on credit card payments and provides break up of all card-wise unbilled transactions. Also thanks to the extra cashback while making card payments through CRED.

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CRED referral

Yaper – Enjoy float money (and extra) using Credit Cards

We all appreciate the benefits of float money. Yaper helps in getting the credit card money to our bank account by ordering stuffs on behalf for their buyers with our credit card from Amazon/Flipkart. The money, Yaper transfers to our account consists of the amount we paid plus an extra Rs 200 or more as a commission. Enjoy this float till the next billing date of your credit card.

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Yaper referral

Slice Card - For emergency fund

Slice works both as a credit card and contingency fund provider. They offer straight to Bank/Paytm cash transfer with variable interest and repayment options. The transfer is via UPI and we get instant cash to the bank account when in need.

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Slice referral

WHAT DID I DO DURING COVID TIMES

My Credit card story…

I am quite a newbie in credit cards management. Till last year I did not have even one credit card.

Today, I have 9 cards.

Kotak Urbane

2 ICICI - Coral & Amazon Pay – Both LTF

SBI Simply Click

HDFC Millennia - LTF

Standard Chartered Digismart – LTF*

Indus Inda Aura Edge – LTF & Free Priority Pass Membership

IDFC One Card - LTF Metal Card

Slice Card - LTF

I was on a credit card application spree when the economy went down due to COVID.
Many bank’s credit books took a hit and I thought it is a good time for applying credit.
I also took a 1 lakh personal loan (again an unsecured credit) @ 10.99 from Kotak during the same time.

Though these frequent credit enquiries did affect my score back then, but it has become better now.(CIBIL 770).

To summarise, managing several credit cards can be quite a challenge for an individual, but if used smartly, having more than one card can also be a boon. Credit cards help in rolling the money and is an advantage in personal budgeting. Also, multiple credit cards give more card-related perks and benefits, in the form of cashbacks and rewards. And needless to say, thanks to Yaper I can now make use of my extra float money to cater my various other requirements.

*PS: Though Standard Chartered DigiSmart is not a straight LTF card, but we can waive off the Rs 49 monthly fees (Digismart doesn’t charge yearly fees) by spending Rs 5,000 in a calendar month. I achieve that by transferring 5,000 to Paytm and takes that back to the Bank and invest the same in Mutual fund. Recently noticed, Paytm is not levying charges for bank transfer.

Aside to say, for NPS monthly payment, I have added NPS as a biller in ICICI iMobile app and use the ICICI Amazon pay card for payment. Though there is a charge of Rs 25, but Amazon gives cashback that very well covers this charge.

AND NOT JUST CREDIT CARDS

I also opened an IDFC Niyo account during the lockdown time.
Got a zero balance, LTF debit card with the benefits of both Niyo (Niyo is a Bangalore based Fintech co) & IDFC Bank.

IDFC gives us the best interest rate of 6.75% on savings account for balance <1 lakh and 7% for >1 lakh.

Also this Niyo card comes with zero forex mark up fees for international transactions. Works perfect as a debit card in India and as a Forex card in foreign countries. With the help of GPS on the phone Niyo app identifies the location and enable us to do offline transactions in foreign countries in their currency with the real time VISA conversion rate. Also, used this card online on Duolingo and Ali express with no extra charges, sweet…!

So this is my budgeting and money management story.
Not any mind blowing ideas, just sharing what I do :slight_smile:

Thanks guys!

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I’m not a pro when it comes to budgeting or savings. But I do follow one simple hack i.e. to transfer x% of my income to my secondary account. This secondary account do not have any online transaction facilities enabled so I cannot spend from it. Also, it gives me a better interest on savings compared the other banks.

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My idea of budgeting comes from this simple book called “Richest man in Babylon”. There he explains that simple way to accumulate money is 10:20:70 rule.
You simply save 10% of you income and never touch it. You give 20% of your income to repay loans and rest 70% can be used for daily life expenditure.

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This is a great hack! I do something similar too but I use it throughout the year not just to save up for specific things. So I set aside a weekly savings goal at the start of every week and try my best to maintain it. When I know some events are coming up that will result in me spending more (such as week before Diwali, or other holidays), I adjust my budget so that my savings goal is still manageable.

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I think the best advice I have got is from the book " Let’s Talk Money" by Monika Halan. Basically the sane advice I got from the book is to split your incoming earnings into two or three buckets - Savings, Expenditure and Investment goals. The idea is to ensure all the money from your salary is first deducted into savings instruments, then into instruments which you are pursuing into investment goals. Managing expenditure with the remaining amount only. This ensure strict control on ones expenses. While I dont do exactly as mentioned, I do make it. a point that in the start of the month, specific amounts are auto-debited towards savings/investment schemes. This way, I am left with whatever amount within which I have to manage my expenses.

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Dear Jupiter Community,

Thank you for sharing your budgeting hacks with us, we truly learned a lot from you all. We will keep all these tips in mind to build a system that helps make your daily budgeting easier.

I’m sure you’re all waiting to hear who the winner is, so I won’t delay any further.

@bininishere - Congratulations! Your highly detailed and planned out budgeting system really helped a lot of our Community Members! Thank you for sharing your meticulous system with us.

As promised, we are sending some goodies your way and we will get in touch with you soon. Hope you enjoy them!

To everyone else - keep an eye out for our next contest!
There’s always another chance to win big :star_struck:

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Hey fam, am so humbled and excited.
Thank you Jupiter :blush:

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Nice writeup, got some good tips

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Thank you :slight_smile:

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