Simple Budget System Setup

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Hey all. I decided to try something new that I don’t know if anyone else has tried yet here involving using Notebooks and multi-nested Subnotebooks with Joplin to make a rudimentary budgeting system. I got the idea from the Kanban suggestion here (courtesy of @victorkane).

Edit 3:

Budget
Budget396×922 37.6 KB

EDIT 1: (click the image to see the full speel)

The way it works is when income comes in, it goes straight to my various accounts under the Unallocated subnotebook. Then, those amounts get distributed in increments throughout my various Unpaid items. After either the full amount or partial amounts are paid, they get copied to their respective Month and Category subnotebook under Paid. All Debts remain in their own separate section due to them not being monthly expenses, per se. Whenever a payment is made on them, a new subnotebook will be made for them under the month that it was paid on. This way, since I can’t always pay off debts every month, I can see what debts are paid when and get an overall idea of how long they will take me to completely take care of.

All monetary transactions will consist of a note that will more than likely be empty with a title that says how much that chunk is in increments of Change, $1, $5, $10, $25 and $100 amounts and be labeled with an indication of which account they were from. Single dollar amounts will most likely apply directly to Groceries and other expenses that need to be more heavily micro managed. All extra change amounts after payments will be moved straight to their Unallocated source and added up when needed. If I’m short in any expense for that month, it could act as a little bit of a buffer while allowing me to not waste money as much as I have been.

Anyone here have any recommendations or suggestions? Feel free to comment below. Also, if parts of this don’t make sense, I can Edit and improve if enough people have questions.

EDIT 2: My indexing system is pretty simple. It’s by priority of when something is due and how urgent it is that I pay that off. The lower the number, the more I need to focus on that specific expense because it’s due sooner.

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I would number the notebooks with an increment of 10 so that it's possible to insert one without renaming the following ones, Basic style :smiley:

Otherwise that sounds like an interesting idea, thanks for sharing!

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On the increment of 10, you mean like 0, 10, 20, 30?

Other than that, thanks for the suggestion. :smiley:

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Yes, 10, 20, 30, etc. So that you can insert a notebook between 10 and 20 by naming it 15 for example.

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That is extremely smart. I didn't think about that. I'm adding how I indexed to the post too. It's pretty simple. :smiley:

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One very important thing I just discovered: for the sake of sanity, the Budget folder must always be at the top of the notebook list. If not, you’ll have a hard time moving money around.

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I remember when Turbo Basic and QuickBasic didn't need line numbers anymore. This was very useful, but sometimes even a gap of 10 didn't help. But quickly after that I switched to C and never looked back.

Ahhh - nostalgia.

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