I was just wondering if anyone else does a yearly budget?  I use quicken to record everything so I used it to create a yearly budget.  I imported all the different catagories that I used in 2008 to a budget, average them over 12 months and adjusted accordingly to our 2009 goals.  Hopefully this way money will be in the account when auto registration or other irregular things occur.  Does anyone else do anything like this?  I think it will be a good help to us as far as getting out of debt.  I specifically alloted about an extra $115.00 a month towards debt removal for that very reason!

Yes, sort of. I do a monthly budget with numbers I at first set annually in January and then adjust in July (but this year, I had to adjust again in Sept/Oct with buying a new house and new costs).I use Excel but should be able to compilate similar information, hopefully, even with having budgets at 2 houses in 2008.

 I need to determine a new amount to put away in savings each month and hopefully we can do that. We think we may need to replace DH's jeep in 3-4 years (just an estimate based on age now and mileage and repairs we are starting to see) and want to pay cash for a good used 4WD when the time comes.

Sort of - some of my work is iffy - like I might get some extra work once or twice during the year and one of the families I work for (childcare) take a lot of vacations so instead of always working two days a week, every week, I will miss days here or there when they are gone. So I don't add in projected extra income and I take an average of 3 weeks a month with the one job and use that to plan my income for the year. This allows for some surprise extra income that usually goes to pay down debt, or gets added to the emergency fund. (I work other jobs too but they are extremely steady). Our expenses stay fairly steady (although some are increasing just because everything is increasing, ugh).

We also have a savings account for property taxes, insurances, annual repairs, car inspections, quarterly water and sewage bills, my dh's golf expenses, and a subscription to a nearby theatre. I add up what all that cost the previous year, divide by 12 and put that much away each month. I've been doing this for four years and it has been the best sanity saver - I actually used to be surprised by the car insurance bills or the property taxes and would get sick worrying about how we would pay them. Oh well, we learn from mistakes, lol.

What we do need to do is start saving for a new-to-us car or two because in the next few years we'll need to replace one vehicle at least. And I have promised myself that we would not take out any more car loans (and we'll try to to stick to that).

 

I review my spending from the previous year when collecting information for my taxes - then if I see something that needs adjusting I adjust it.  But I adjust my budget regularly anyway.

 We have our basic monthly budget plus our annual budget.  Each month gets tweaked as we go along, hopefully not too many Murphys along the way in 2009!

It's good to know how much is being set aside into the sinking funds for premiums, holidays, license tabs, etc. Looking at the annual budget motivates us to stick to the monthly plan. 

 

I have not been happy with Quicken's automatic yearly budget, so I do mine using a spreadsheet from livingonadime.com A yearly budget used to help us, but in the past couple of years our income has bounced so much that I can just go month by month.

I created my own budget spreadsheet, along with projections for paying off my bills; I update each one monthly - although so many of my bills are the same every month, that I don't need to do much to the monthly/annual budget.