Problems managing weekly budget money

[Mike75]

1) if you "think" you have $1000 extra per month, then set that $1000 aside as soon as you get paid. Put the money into an account without debt or atm card access (you can set accounts up to be atm deposit only at many banks).

Then continue doing what you do and see if the $1000 you think you have and what reality really is match up. Might be you need $200 of that to live off of, and $800 can be applied to debt or savings... or something different.

2) I have an issue with "how" you budgeted some essential living needs (like contact lens solution) with beer money. How both fall under the $60/week discretionary spending is what I think is the root of the problem. Meaning budget better, and I think problem goes away.

What I mean by budget better, is when you go grocery shopping, can you add the contact solution to the grocery budget? If so, that $60 week now does not cover "needs". So the $60 now goes farther.

Good Ideas... But I also think that he needs to keep some money in his hands for emergency expenses that can't be charged on insurance or credit cards.

[Dallas Dollars]

Budgeting involves understanding how much money you earn and spend over a period of time. When you create a budget, you are creating a plan for spending and saving money. Try to eliminate the unnecessary spending by buying your groceries in bulk. also there are multiple of online sites the provide rebates and discount coupons.

[TMBGfan]

multiple of online sites the provide rebates and discount coupons.

I would be careful with discount coupon sites. Often they will have expired or even fabricated discount codes or will claim to offer a discount in order to drive traffic through affiliate links when no discount is offered. They have a poor ethical reputation.

[PaydayLoner]

It makes me feel like a little old lady to admit it, but I was surprised at how much coupons help with groceries. I think the kind of coupon sites that people are talking about are the legit ones, where you install a coupon printer thingy on your computer from the site, and it keeps track of how often you print the coupon, sets the expiration date at whatever the program says (usually a month from the date you printed it) and puts a barcode on each one, so they're legit. They work at the grocery store just like regular coupons from the newspaper.

I can't post a link, but one site is just called coupons with a .com and you can find others just by searching for printable coupons, and add the name of the product if you're looking for something in particular.

The only thing I'd suggest is using a separate free email address if you have to give your email address out to register on a site, because some of the places will send a lot of spam, but I just let them dump all my spam to an extra gmail address that I don't use for anything else. I've never had any problem getting the coupons accepted at a store. The trick is never to buy anything you wouldn't buy otherwise, just because you can save money on it, otherwise you're really not saving anything. With a lot of things, the generic or an off-brand is just as good and cheaper without coupons.

Of course, it only saves money if you have a computer printer already and you have to figure there's a few cents for paper and ink, but I've found the online printable coupons really do help. I've never tried rebates, so don't know anything about that.

[Debt Relief]

Have to agree with jIM_OHIO. You have a lot of "living" expenses lumped in with your discretionary spending. Contact lenses, groceries, shampoo, etc. are ALL living expenses IMO and should be budgeted as such. Beer, movies, eating out, etc. are what I call discretionary spending, and those are the types of items that should be paid out of your $60/week.

People here can't create extra money for you out of thin air. So if $60/week isn't enough for your spending money then the extra money you need has to come from somewhere... And the obvious place is to pay less on your credit obligations or save less (assuming all of your other expenses have already been "trimmed" as much as possible).

If you haven't already you should spend a month or two writing down every single penny you spend and what you spent it on. EVERYTHING no matter how small. The exercise if often very enlightening.