Maunderlust

After a long hiatus, Maunderlust returns to: Oprah’s Debt Diet (slurp)

Step 5: Create a Monthly Spending Plan

In this lesson, Oprah, the richest woman in the universe, recommends coming up with a sensible monthly spending plan. It should be laid out about 15 days ahead of time so that you can make adjustments if you’re going to have more or less income than you expected.

Oprah recommends the following distribution of wealth:

Fortunately, I’m ahead of the game in regards to housing and transportation costs. And I have some degree of control over other living expenses. (though I’m not very good at exercising it.)

Oprah also advises assigning paychecks to specific expenses. I’d never really thought of budgeting in those terms. The gist is, you subdivide each paycheck to cover your monthly expenses. It makes perfect sense. But, I’ve always thought in terms of big bucket of money that fills up and empties out at the end of each month.

To keep an eye on the bucket, I’ve been updating the Google Spreadsheet. The daily spending tab I try to update throughout the day. The debt summary gets updated once a week.

[tags]Oprah, Debt Diet, Debt Reduction, Google Spreadsheet[/tags]