My Sister's Budget Blog

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The one thing we want all our kids to have…but what does that mean all year round.   Our first grader seems to be invited to a birthday party every other Saturday.
You might ask how we handle this on My Sister’s Budget? Well it is simple. We have a category of our budget called gifts and throughout the year, my wife and I buy random birthday gifts. We buy toys, lotions, books, or anything we think might be a good present when we see it on clearance. Then all these gifts are placed in a box in our basement. When a birthday approaches, we just go to our birthday box and pick out the most appropriate present for that person.
The last two birthdays we gave a race car set to my son’s friend and we gave a winter glove, scarf, hat, blanket set to my niece. The total cost of both was $5.75.
We gave them both nice gifts, but had purchased these gifts at least 8 months prior. The winter gift was purchased last year when winter products went on clearance and the race car set was bought on clearance after Christmas when Walmart put all their excess toys on sale at 75% off.
Start your gift category today and have fun shopping those clearance racks.
BTW–your kids will have a blast going through the gift box every time they need a present for their next birthday party!!!

Tonight is the Free My Sister’s Budget Seminar at the Hurricane Library at 7:00 pm in Hurricane Utah. CEO and 15 year “My Sister” professional, Evan Thomas will teach the basics of the mysistersbudget budgeting system. We promise that you will leave tonight with “A New Way to Look at Your Money!”

Recently we were approached by a new married couple that has been using the envelope budgeting system. Basically the 30 second run down on that system is you have envelopes for each category of your life. Cash your paycheck each month and place budgeted monthly amounts into each envelope. When the envelope is empty, then you can’t spend any more money in that category or you must borrow from another category. It is a beautiful system, but not always the best idea to keep all your money lying around the house.
So enter MySistersBudget into their newly married lives. My Sister’s Budget is basically a virtual version of the envelope system. Instead of keeping the cash at home in envelopes, your money stays in your bank account…but the budget shows you how much you have in each category (or virtual envelope).
That is it in a nutshell. If you are a fan of the envelope system, then you will love My Sisters Budget!!!

In 1988 I was living in Oregon with my husband and 2 small children. We were living paycheck to paycheck and never seemed to have extra money. Even when we had a little money set aside, something always came up (insurance premiums, car repairs) to eat up our savings.

I developed a budgeting system that helped us save automatically and incorporated a kind of mini-savings approach. Within a couple of months I knew I was on to something. My categories were growing and I felt calm about our finances. My brothers and sisters started referring to it as “my sister’s budget”.

After 18 years and much encouragement and support from my siblings, we bring this system to you in its original notebook and software form.

There is one thing I can guarantee. Whether or not you want it or not, you will be receiving advice all the days of your life. When my wife and I got married, I was given a great piece of advice that has stuck with me all these years. “MAKE SURE YOUR WIFE HAS SPENDING MONEY.” When I first received the advice it almost sounded like a joke, but it is so true. We all need to have a little spending money that belongs to us and us alone.
That is one thing about My Sister’s Budget that is so great. In our family, we create an individual category for each member of our family. I get $50 a month in my category and my wife gets the same. (our kids get $10-15) I chose not to spend all of the $50, so the next month it builds to $100 and so on. I now have $572 in my category and I can buy the TV that I want and no one can deny me because it is my spending money. My wife is doing the same with her money except her goals are a bit larger (a piano).
Take a little advice from me that i received the day I got married…Make sure you and your significant other have some spending money…we all need that kind of freedom!!!

It is not always the funnest conversation to have but it seems that most neighborhoods these days have at least one house in their neighborhood that has dead grass and a little white piece of paper taped in the window. Sad as it may be it seems that foreclosure and bankruptcy’s are all around us. I always hear that Utah is high amongst the bankruptcy filings, so I wanted to get a little more background and information to see what is happening around me. In my searching I found a site with data from 2009 that I have found quite interesting…http://www.uscourts.gov/News/TheThirdBranchBAPCPAmap.aspx

Lately a lot of questions have come up about the Federal Housing Tax Credit. Do I have to pay it back? From the research we have done, the answer to that question is: “It depends on when you bought your home.” Probably not the answer you wanted to hear, but it really does. In researching I came across a website that answered many of the questions you have been asking so I am including that link in this post. Hope this answers your questions…but if not, just ask us and we’ll dive in deeper to get you the answer. http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/

Soccer season is coming to a close and with both our little kids playing this year, we are looking forward to a break in the action. Two games a week per child and one practice was a little too much for our taxi cab this year. Funny story from the soccer day our family was in charge of bringing snacks and drinks. I travel for work a lot, so naturally our home is full of hotel shampoo and soaps. Until today, we didn’t know how weird we had become…we started serving our half time water break and giving each child a cup to get some water. Well our plastic cups were individually sealed and have logos of various hotels. The kids had a heck of a time getting their cups out of the plastic and their parents got a good laugh out of how we had collected cups from staying at hotels. I have been known amongst our friends as a good budgeter, but now they joke that I have gone too far…hotel cups??

I still can’t believe it!!?? You know that feeling when you have been teaching one of your children something (like math) when all of a sudden the light just turns on. Well we had a budget moment with my daughter this weekend. We were at Wal-Mart walking down through the toy section when the usual calls for everything on the isle began…but this time it was all about the Wizard of Waverly shoes. But mom, they are only $20…so I blurted out, “How much do you have on your page?” (we still call our categories pages because we used to use the notebook budgeting system on pages) The response back was, “20 dollars”. So I told her she had enough to buy the shoes, but all of a sudden the talking stopped and the lights turned on in her head. She realized that if she bought the shoes, she would not have any money left….

Life is constantly changing and we want everyone to have the chance to use our budgeting system, so we are giving away a FREE copy of the My Sister’s Budget software! For details, visit us on facebook.