The word budget seems to scare lots of people, and most people think that having a budget means doing without. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you are a computer savvy person your budget can be done on Quicken or Microsoft Money, but in reality a budget can be done with pencil and paper. When I first made my budget I used a spreadsheet, but later found that I prefer having my information written down in a spiral notebook. The point is that you don’t have to be fancy, just do it.

A budget basically consist of two things. Those two things are income and expenses. When making your budget you need to write down your bring home pay for the income, not your gross. We want to see how much actual cash you have to work with.

Don’t forget to add in any other income you might have, such as child support, pensions, royalties, etc. Once you have done this, start your expense column. This is where you need to put your thinking cap on. When making a budget for expenses, start by writing down your utilities, house and car payments, and all bills you have. This is the easy part because you know exactly what these expenses are.

After you finish with that, it is time to write down all those things that cause our finances to be messed up, in most cases. You will need to estimate your fuel for your automobiles for the month, your food, and other items. You even need to make an allotment for miscellaneous items.

There are also those occasional visits to the doctor, buying clothes, and entertainment. One you subtract your regular expenses from your bring home pay, you know how much money you have to divide between the other expenses that you are estimating.

Most people don’t really realize where their money is going and therefore it’s gone before the next payday. Just a little planning ahead will avoid this problem.

One important aspect of making a budget,is making sure you start a savings plan, if you don’t already have one. Put at least 10% away into savings, and if you are so inclined, 10% to church.

Once you get used to this system you will find that having a budget help you to have more, not less.

Tags: Budget

This entry was posted on November 1, 2010 at 6:33 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Budgeting Featured by Guest Writer No Comments Yet