How do you working ladies divide up your paycheck? Do you put a certain percentage towards all the different departments? Or do you just go "$50 in savings, $200 toward groceries, etc."?

Bright Blessings!
Rawiya

DH and I came up with this arrangement when we were saving for a wedding, and now we're saving for a house. It works really well for us.

We have three checking accounts - his, mine, and joint. My check goes into my account, his goes into his account. We get paid every two weeks. As soon as we get out deposit stubs, we transfer money into the joint account. (Joint pays rent, groceries, phone, etc.)

I take home between $900-$1000 every two weeks and put $600 into joint. I have an automatic transfer set up so that every Friday $25 goes into my savings account. Anything else I keep for gas money, eating out, my cell phone bill, etc. I really don't track my own spending as well as I should, but I do look at the end of the month to see if I didn't spend more than I took in.

We don't do percentages here. We have a set amount for each category that we budget, but our percentages are drastically skewed from the recommended amounts.

Housing in our area is very cheap (I pay $160/month for my house payment on a 20 year loan), but electricity and travel expenses are very high.

Man, I need to move. My rent is $650/mo. It's killing us, especially since my job isn't giving me much work lately. Currently anytime I get any money I put 10% in. I like the idea of the three accounts. I may do that once I get a better paying job.

DH and I have each our own checking and savings accounts. Every month $800 goes into our savings accounts for buying a home. We pay $730 in rent each month currently and that is the cheapest rent around here! We both pay for utilities and food. The rest goes to gas, spending money and any extra that we find goes into savings as well. We are very conscious of what we buy and only eat out about twice a month.