apostate wrote:I used Excel to make a budget.
I have used Quicken, Mint, MS Money and still nothing is better to setup a budget than excel for me. This is just for the setup the budget part of your endeavour though. What I do it start the top of the spread sheet with our combined paychecks, add in a line for each "fixed" expense (mortgage, electric, insurance, loan payments and so on). Everything left you can divide up. This is where those packages like Mint or Quicken come in handy to know how much you have been spending on eating out, groceries, shopping etc so you can make a realistic budget. Like if you are spending $500/mo on Groceries and you decide to budget only $300 for it then you are likely going to be over budget every month.