I’m not seeing it yet - but YNAB is my current approach and I adore it.

I used to approach it in a project my income for the month and then assign that money into categories and into a savings pool. It was a good spreadsheet. I liked it.

But I find the envelope system that YNAB uses extremely powerful. You can set your categories (and it encourages you to remember expenses that only come up once in a while and budget for them on a monthly basis) and then you use the money you CURRENTLY have to fund them. You assign every dollar a job. Which means I can totally splurge on a fancy dinner… But it means I might be pulling money I assigned to my ski pass out (I sound ridiculously entitled, sorry… the blog posts they have give better perspectives if you are starting from high debt or low income). And I don’t want to pull that money because I’ve been setting it aside slowly for months… So I don’t splurge on drinks and dessert or I suggest street tacos or cooking at home for my friends instead.

I think #2 is unrealistic for a lot of people… The other points aren’t bad.

Heehee. At least with money I can know exactly how I’m spending it. I hate the effort it takes to track calories and the level of associated uncertainty.

Not necessarily. You can have a budget at any income level. It just might mean facing the fact that your expenses are higher than your income. No one says a budget can’t show you how much your going into debt instead of how much your saving. My partner was there through his college. It’s just depressing so you are less likely to do it. I don’t know if I would stick to it.

But I think knowing where your money is going and where it is coming from is a key step in motivating yourself to make a change… either to fight for other opportunities or to change spending habits. And it also gives you visibility into what differences it makes on a weekly or monthly or yearly basis.

Envelope style budgeting:)

I’m going to reply to your comment… But check out the philosophy of You Need A Budget. One of their keystones is roll with the punches. If you go on a spending spree, you just acknowledge it, cover those categories with money from somewhere else (or have it be on a credit card where it’ll warn you youre going into debt).

Yeah - we set up chores on a Google task list (which is what we already use). I tried to make each room its own thing (and only have 1-2 tasks per room). He also uses a white board so I add things there too. Good note of not adding it all at once.

Living together is super challenging. (It’s overall going well. Im just grumpy atm.) I hope that medication and/or therapy will help make things easier for him.

My fiance was diagnosed recently but we didn’t have insurance to get started with treatment. Just the diagnosis has helped him figure out what parts of him aren’t just “not trying hard enough”. But to be honest, I’m really heartened when you talk about a clean house because I need that for my own anxiety and it takes him so much effort that it’s hard to ask it of him.

I used Libby. (Just go grab a local library card and see if you can dig up any old library cards from anywhere else you’ve lived… You can have multiple libraries linked.) Also great for audiobooks.