How Do I Manage My Money: Sharing My Money Routine

There is no one right way to manage your money. What works for some, won’t work for others and that is okay! But you can learn from how others do things, get ideas and use what suits you! So I wanted to share my money routine, maybe you’ll find it useful!

My financial situation

Firstly how you manage your money depends on your financial situation. So I will do a little recap of mine for reference. That way you’ll know if anything I say is even remotely relatable to you.

I currently work part-time for minimum wage, one day per week, sometimes extra, as I study. I have two children under 5 and I’m in a relationship. We own our home with a mortgage (which is relatively small).

We split our main bills with my partner paying most, if not all, groceries. We have a joint mortgage and two joint accounts, one savings and one we pay mortgage from.

Other than that our daily finances are separate.

My income is about $2,500/month (this is wages, working for families tax credits and what my partner transfers to my account weekly to cover his share of the bills).

What are my goals for my money routine

The goal of my money routine is of course to make managing my money easier and to reach my personal financial goals.

The routine helps me to not overspend and to get me closer to my financial goals week by week.

I want to enjoy my money routine so that I’m keen to do it every week and month, and it is also a way for me to stay accountable and make sure I’m going towards my goals.

My money routine

My money routine is a mix of automatic and manual tasks. I like to have “control” of certain transactions while still make some of them automatic to lessen the need to make manual payments.

I also use a mix of paper and electronic tracking. For example I do my budgets and spending tracking on paper, but track my investments and dividends in Excel.

I get paid wages fortnightly so I have set a separate account to split the fortnightly payment to weekly payments. I have chosen to get Working for Families Tax Credits weekly.

Once I have my weekly amount I make transfers straight away.

I transfer money towards our mortgage and rates payments which come automatically out of our joint account, I just need to transfer money to the joint account.

I have an account for bills and I transfer money there each week to cover them. I have summed up what I/we pay in a month for power, internet, phone, insurances and subscriptions, then divided the total by 4. I transfer this amount to the bills account each week to cover all bills as they come due.

Some come automatically out of that account, some I pay manually and some are direct debits so they come out of my main account that my Visa debit is linked to and I transfer money back as needed.

I have an automatic payment going out weekly to my savings account that is ear marked for our trip to Finland.

I also have a sinking funds account where I transfer a certain amount each week. The money from there goes to things like medical expenses (GPs, pharmacy, dental, osteopath etc), the kids, car (petrol, WoF etc) and other treats for myself as things come up.

Those are my priorities.

After all that is done I will see how much I have left and then decide what to do with it.

Next up in the order would be investing and emergency fund savings, then spending money (including groceries) and other savings.

By Sunday anything left over will be transferred to some form of savings, usually towards going to Finland.

So I run a zero-based budget.

Every Sunday I also do my spending tracking and check how my budget is tracking.

Then at the start of every month I look back at the previous month and write my finance checks for the blog for accountability. (You can find the latest here.)

This includes a look at the budget and how it held up, savings progress and any investing updates plus any dividends received (which I track once a month in an Excel spreadsheet).

My money routine maybe isn’t the most simple out there but it works for me, and I enjoy moving my money around deciding the purpose for it each week.

What is your money routine like? Let me know in the comments!