On X-H2o, there is a good thread about money/budgets/Dave Ramsey, and someone asked how we do our budget.

Here it is.

Here's our budget with most of the numbers changed (higher in most of them)

I get paid twice a month, on the 15th and last day of the month. When I get paid, I transfer 50% of our total monthly bills (mortgage, utilities, etc) into our bill payment account. That way, when a bill comes in, as soon as I open it I schedule the payment online and it's paid the next day. No questions asked, the bills are just always paid because there is always the correct amount of money in there to cover them.

$25/check goes into our Christmas savings account, so we can buy Christmas gifts whenever we need to basically.

$60/check goes into the car repair account for tires, oil, brakes, etc.

$40/check goes into both my personal and my wife's personal checking account for blow money.

Whatever needs to comes out in cash for the envelopes, clothing (me, her, kids), gifts, Church, dining out, etc.

Whatever is leftover stays in our joint checking account for gas and groceries and some miscellaneous stuff, but we know how much that leftover is and we can't just blow it on a TV or something because it's spoken for.

At the end of the month, if there is anything left in joint checking, and there normally is, I transfer it to our bills account so we start out the month at ZERO and the extra can go to debt.