(11C) (12C) (15C) (?C?) Easy Budget (for cash)

[Michael Zinn]

This is an extremely simple way to budget your cash for the month. It is intended for people who do no budgeting whatsoever. (If you already do your budget with GNU Cash/Envelop Budgeting/Excel/whatever you don't really need this).

The Problem
If you have money left at the end of the month all is well, but if you run out of money in the middle of the month you have a problem because it's already to late to do anything about it.

The Solution
Write a program that can show you how much money you should have left at the end of each day. E.g. if you have $250 in disposable income per month, on the 17th of the month you should have at least $112.90 left to make sure it will last the whole month.

Setup
1. Think about how much cash you can spend per month (groceries, going out etc.)
2. Put that amount in register 0
3. At the start of the month, withdraw that much cash from your bank account and put it in your wallet. That's your cash budget for the month.

If you live in a country where you might get robbed you could keep part of your money at home, but you need to put "IOU"s into your wallet. E.g. if you leave a $50 bill at home you should put a $50 IOU in your wallet. The idea is that you can look into your wallet and know how much money you have left for this month.

Using the Program
1. Enter the day of the month (1-31)
2. Start program B (Budget)
3. It will show you how much cash you should have left in your wallet at the end of the day
3a. If you have less money in your wallet you should try to spend less in the coming days to make sure you won't run out of cash before the end of the month
3b. If you have more cash in your wallet you can go out and party!

Program

Code:


LBL B
FIX 2  ; change this according to your local currency, e.g. 0 for Yen
3
1
/
RCL 0
*
RCL 0
x >< y
-
RTN

[Michael Zinn]

I'm actually using this program right now to get a better feeling for my spending while my more serious budgeting program (desktop) is still in development, but I noticed that this is less useful when you are already over budget for the time that has passed.

So here's an additional program that you can use when you spent too much:

1. Enter how much money you have left
2. Enter the day of the month
3. Start A
-> It will now show you how much money you can spend per day so that lasts for the rest of the month

Code:


LBL A
GSB B
/
RCL 0
*
3
1
/
RTN

How to use both programs together:
- Use program B to check your budget
- If you have more money then everything is fine
- If you have a little less then try to spend a little less in the coming days
- If you have a lot less then use program A to figure out how to get to the end of the month without running out of money first

[Dave Britten]

As an aside, the 17BII and 27S are perfect for this kind of use case, since you can use the stat or cash flow lists to record any number of named lists of transaction amounts. Use one for your cash account, and more as needed for any credit accounts or gift cards, then use solver formulas to tie all the balances together. Plus you can set a repeating alarm to remind you to reconcile.