Freedom Account & Budgeting!

**Maddy's Mom** · 12-15-2011, 03:35 PM

Hi Y'all! I am happy to announce that we are ahead of the game for now! We have our Jan. mortgage payment paid and all our December bills are done, Christmas presents are purchased and I still have 1,000 left in the account! I have another 1,000 emergency fund in a seperate bank, as well as a Freedom Account(I LOVE this idea-from Mary Hunt!). I am having trouble figuring out how much and how often to put money in the account, so I recently withdrew all the money and am using a sort of improvised envelope system for this. I have $460 total seperated between several categories, such as Christmas(just depleted), Vehicle Repair, Home Maintenance, Family Outings/ Small trips, Clothing, New Vehicle Fund, etc. I love taking whatever amount I have and divvying it all up between them based on need. I have a few other categories I can't recall off the top of my head, but most of these are things we pay for anyway just out of our checking account so I thought it would help the budget to have the money set aside. This really helps cut down on random spending, because I know exactly how much I have for each thing. Some categories have $0 right now, some have more(house & auto repairs for example). I am saving the $1000 extra right now for expenses in Jan. since we don't know when we get paid again and we have some dental bills upcoming. Does anyone else do freedom accounts and how has it worked for you??
My debt repayment is on hold(paying only slightly over the min. right now) since I have an upcoming medical expense that will be several thousand, so I am saving up for that. I hope some of that $1000 will be the beginning of a new medical savings for me!
We'll see...

**mzpepper** · 12-23-2011, 12:43 PM

I had not heard of the concept of Freedom Account before. Thank you for sharing this. I have been playing around with the spread sheets that are on her website. Now I just need to decide whether to use the 10 sub accounts or more. I think that this will be a help in starting off the new year more organized. I had thought that I would be using the envelopes to save in but whenever I have cash in the house and the kids ask if I can help them out, I invariably give them some cash. I know, this is a problem that I need to deal with but in the meantime, if the cash is not here it is easier to say NO. I already have a couple of accounts that I can transfer back and forth from online with no fees so I will use one for the Freedom account. Will let you know how it goes.

**Wendy99** · 12-23-2011, 01:38 PM

We do that, but we just call it our holding. We don't have a separate bank account for the little things like medication, vet etc, but we transfer vacation $ etc to that account. we just started 2 months ago, but it's working very well so far .. still have some tweaking to do.

**my4littlebuffaloes** · 12-26-2011, 11:58 AM

We have a freedom account. I keep it in the bank though to earn a little interest and because it is too much cash to have on hand here at home. Depending on the time of year and what expense are almost due we can have a few thousand. It seems like we have all this money - but really with a freedom account the money is needed for something already - it is like what someone else calls it - a holding area.

I have a notebook with a sheet of paper for each section of the account and I track it that way. So kids activities, car insurance, car repair, pet expenses (not food), etc. I have used it for years and I can go back and look at our expenses from 5 years ago and see how they compare if I want. I love it!