This is something near to my heart. We all use specialist pieces of software to manage a companies finances (I know, its exactly what I sell for a living www.verde.co.nz) but we neglect to manage our personal finances the same way. At the end of it all, our personal finances need to be seen to be the "business" of the family. I am a huge fan of POCKETSMITH. Essentially a personal financial management tool. It costs $9 a month, but it gives me the ability to create budgets, and more importantly links to my bank accounts (all of them) to import statements. I sit down for ten minutes once a week and allocate our spend to budget categories. Right down to the cent. This gives me the ability to track our spend that is out of mind but adds up quickly (Yes, I am looking at you cheeky flat white coffee's) This also allows me to break down periodic spend into monthly amounts and accrue it (What you are suggesting Dave ) and measure the spend against the accrual. As a family, we dump our accruals into an interest bearing account monthly and spend out of that as and when the periodics occur all while measuring against budget. This sounds like a lot of work, but with Pocketsmith, its really only a few clicks of a mouse. We have gotten to the point of introducing our children to it. So when out in the shops and they ask for a toy or videogame, we stop and first check on the pocketsmith app how we are tracking on that budget so that we make an informed choice. I realise this teaches them to think about the expenditure in the bigger scheme of things before just blindly spending money. Seeing as we are on the subject, another small tip for those with kiddos - when your child wants to buy something a little expensive with their own pocket money and they are a little short, never "lend" them the money. The trap is too easy to say "I'll give you the extra $20 you need and take it out of your next pocket money". This teaches them that its ok to borrow to buy luxuries. As hard as it is, they should be taught that borrowing is only for houses and maybe cars - everything else Cash is King.
