Here are the rules we have set, which are now forcing us to stick to our budget. Before we arrived at these, we tried some less effective methods, so I'll talk a bit about those as well in each section:
a) No matter what, all of my cheques go straight into savings.
When we started out, we tried saving a certain amount every month, putting our savings away before making other payments, and setting minimum amounts we had to keep in there. But inevitably this ended in too much "oh, we can't put the amount in since we're going to have to take it out anyway to cover rent" or some other nonsense. There are scheduled times throughout the year when we will need to take money out of savings to cover the stuff in our budget. However, we don't want to count on the money being in our main account on payday. We are living off my husband's cheques, and supplementing with mine. We want a house, goshdarnit!
b) We aren't carrying credit cards. (And I'm not carrying ANY cards)
This one was tough for me. I felt like I always had to carry a debit or credit card, if not for spending, then at least for emergencies. And anyway, it seemed logical to use the card instead of cash; I'd get points! Which I could buy more things with! Who doesn't want points?!
We tried to find ways around this. We sealed our cards up in little envelopes in our wallets, and checked them every week. But ultimately, we would open the envelope for a legitimate reason like buying groceries, then the floodgates would open. "Oh, I could go grab a sandwich for lunch. I've got the credit card open anyway." We are TERRIBLE, and I was the worst. I was eating out at LEAST once every day, stopping for sushi on the way home and buying (and eating) way too much of it. I'm talking $40 worth of sushi just for me.
Clearly, for me, having access to "infinite" sushi is a no-no. So we've put the envelopes at home, still sealed. But not only that! We've also removed every reason we would have to take the cards out of the house. Here's what we did:
First, we took a look at our budget sheet, to see what expenses we have that require us to carry a card. The interesting answer was that NONE of our expenses do, if we have cash on hand, and that most of our purchases out of the house weren't legitimate household expenses anyway. But what could we do to solve it? We still need to buy groceries, after all, and I can't carry hundreds of dollars of cash around. I'd spend it just like I spend plastic. So the next two points cover what ELSE we did:
c) We get allowances.
We've had allowances in our budget for a while, but it was beginning to seem like a bit of a joke since we'd only occasionally pay the credit card for the amounts we spent on eating out and other stuff. We were transferring money to our personal accounts every week, and using our own cards to either buy stuff or take out cash. We got $50 every two weeks (which I recently found out is LESS than one of my coworkers gives her kids as an allowance! Crazy!). But like I said, it wasn't working.
But now that we aren't carrying credit cards, or even our personal debit cards around, allowances are a necessity. We want to be able to eat out a little bit, and buy each other gifts, and feel like normal people. But we also don't want to have to independently stop at the bank every other week and take out our allotted cash, and honestly, I could see myself taking more than my allotted amount some weeks. I can justify just about anything to myself. So here's what we do now:
We go to the bank and take out allowances for the next 10 pay periods (well, the number isn't set - it depends on accounting because we want to avoid pulling out of savings, so at first it was only 3 sets of allowances each that we pulled out). Then we take it home and put it into little envelopes, and write a name and date on each one. My current one, for example, says "Fai - September 26" on it. We upped the amount to $60 (it's still a LOT less than we were spending biweekly on the credit card) and I carry the next sealed envelope in my wallet, which makes me feel like I can handle an emergency, like if I need to grab a taxi home or if I accidentally go over my budget at a restaurant or something. Interestingly, it hasn't happened yet. I don't open the envelope early because I know how much it sucks to have to wait EXTRA long for the next one.
d) My husband carries one debit card. (For the joint account)
I think I've made it clear that I'm the untrustworthy one in my relationship, but there's more to it than that. You see, I'm the organizer; I know what's going on with our accounting. My husband has access to the spreadsheet, but he trusts me too much and never looks at it (which I've told him, but I guess his laziness plays a part as well). End result? I know what we can get away with, and he doesn't. And we can use this to our advantage.
Since my husband doesn't generally have an idea of what's going on in our accounting (which account has money in it for groceries, for example), he's the perfect one to carry the debit card around which we use for grocery shopping. We don't want to carry that kind of cash around (we already have our allowances in cash, and bringing $250 extra for our stop at Costco would probably make me nervous) so we make sure we go grocery shopping together. He carries the card, and I keep track of the shopping budget. Occasionally I might ask him to stop at the store and pick up something particular for dinner, but there's communication, and we both know the card is ONLY for use at the grocery store (we also buy our transit passes with it, but we get those at the grocery store).
e) We moved all our recurring expenses to the credit card.
This probably isn't a necessity for anyone, but you know what? I really like points. We get quite a few free payments on our card every year just from using the card. If you're not paying any interest, that's free money! And on top of that, it's good to use your credit cards regularly (again, as long as you're paying them in full every month) because it makes them show up as active on your credit report.
So we have moved all of our recurring expenses, like phone bills, netflix, utilities, etc. to the credit card. They still go on our budget spreadsheet (we keep a separate section of the sheet for our credit card, then just have a line for the total credit card payment on the main part of the budget sheet), and they get paid in full every month. The best part is, they're relatively predictable amounts, so our budget is never stretched too far because of unexpected credit card expenses.
END RESULT
Anyway. I know this is a lot of stuff to read, and a lot of you probably already have your financial lives in order, or have a different kind of lifestyle that calls for different arrangements.
But for me, this has already helped me stick to home-cooked food. If I don't make my lunch before work or the night before, I go hungry. And when that happens, I sure don't forget to pack lunch the next day!
It's also had an interesting side-effect. Now, when I use my spending money to go out for sushi, I buy a really reasonable amount of sushi (sometimes just one roll, and never more than a simple 3-roll combo). Of course, this is because I know I'll want sushi tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that (I seriously never get tired of sushi). I have successfully tricked myself into eating small quantities!
Just yesterday I stopped at the place down the street and got a house roll. That's it, just one 300-calorie roll instead of a whole tray of them. And eating it right after work meant I was relatively satiated before I ate a smaller meal later, at dinnertime.
It's a big roll and it costs about $6.50, but I just got the one. After all, I can't open my next allowance envelope until the 10th.