For me setting a budget is quite an easy thing to do. I know when I get paid, I know my expenses and when all the major things are due like car insurance, car registration, gas/water/electricity/phone bills whether that be monthly/quarterly or annually.
The budget I keep is a simple spreadsheet with the month as columns and budget categories as rows. Its quite effective and does the job well. I can see how much ive allocated to each category and unspent money is rolled over into the next month. This allows me to start putting aside and allocating $50 a month so that when that $600 owners corp fee is due there is money there ready for that purpose. Its not 100% ynab style but its pretty close.
But like all things making a budget then sticking too it are 2 seperate beasts. Its a continual struggle to not overspend in a category such as shopping or misc (the black hole of discretionary spending!) Any remaining money is thrown at the mortgage bringing that down. Sadly for this year we have not been as successful as we would have liked and we are having to reign in spending, but this isnt a bad thing.
With our plan there is now a burden on us to keep within our budget as there will be very little wiggleroom should we not be able to commit to it. We will require every spare sent to save for deposits and the additional expenses of owning a house such as stamp duty and conveyancing fees. Expect some cost cutting to occur.
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