I learned this technique when I was in a very structured living system with a set amount of money per month and very little variation to my food expenses and other "needs" expenses so they did not change to much. You take the money left after budgeting needs and you divide it evenly by the number of days left in the month. This gives you your daily allowance of spending. You then update this every day accounting for the spending of the previous day. This system can be involved but takes only a couple of minutes in the record keeping process of spending.
Let me run though an example if after I have budgeted the things I need in a month and I have $150. For convenience the month has thirty day then the first calculation I do is 150/30 and I find I can spend $5 a day for the rest of the month and meet my budget. So on the first day of the month I actually was fine to not spend anything that wasn't in my needs budget and so the 2nd day I still have $150/29 and I get $5.17 that I can spend each day now. This is an evidence of the old saying "a penny saved is a penny earned", because in saving my $5 from the first day I gained money for the rest of the days. If I do spend money over my needs budget or that wasn't included in the needs budget I subtract it from my $150 and my daily spending allowance drops.
Some great advantages of this method:
When you account for your daily spending you will become more aware of your spending habits and will see in what ways you can improve.
Saving money can become a fun thing and seeing your daily allowance grow becomes a reward to good spending habits.
If you take the daily approach you can control a day's spending instead of a month at a time and it is easier to control a day than a month.
At the end of the month you will see the rewards of good spending habits or see ways to improve your bad spending habits.
This encourages good record keeping.
Something to keep in mind: any time you go over budget in any category in your needs note that so you can make changes on the next months budget to compensate.
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A really great way I found to help save money is actually through a bank called ING Direct - www.ingdirect.com
Their savings account has 4.5% APY on savings accounts and also earn up to 5.30% on checking accounts. Plus, it's really good to higher your goal for how much you save every 3 months. You start out with $1,000 and then higher it up to $2,000. Through that, I have been able to save more than $4,000 in just one year and keep it in the account, it really helps.
thanks for the comments those are good ideas I like the raising the savings bar idea
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