Budgeting Your Money

With gas prices starting to go up again and employment opportunities becoming scarce it's more important then ever to save your money and learn how to budget correctly. It's amazing to see how expensive things are these days. I went to the store two days ago and spent almost $4 on a gallon of milk! I find this to be rediculous. Even with our families current financial standing being good we still budget our money out every month.

The first thing you need to do when budgeting your money is know exactly how much income you have coming in every month. When budgeting your money you also need to write down the specific times you get paid. Do you get paid once a week, every other week, twice a month, or once a month? Depending on when you get paid your budgeting stratigies are going to be a little different.

Next thing that needs to be done is you need to know exactly how much your minimum monthly payments are on all of your credit accounts. You can find out what your minimum payments are by looking at your bill or if you would like to look at your credit report you can also get that information from Equifax. Once you write down your minimum monthly payments you need to go back down your list and write down what you actually pay for each credit bill. For example if you have a credit card with a minimum payment of $25 but you pay $100 then you would want to write that down (25 / 100 is how I would write it down). Next write down the differnece between the two so you know how much extra money you have in the case of an emeregency. Next write down your other monthly bills such as car insurance, electricity, water & sewer, garbage, cell phone!, ect.






Once you know how much you make and how much your monthly bills all you need to figure out when everything is due. I use a spread sheet to do this. Start with writing down the days of the week. Write down on each day when a bill is due, for instance I lable my spread sheet from 1 to 31 and I will put my mortgage on the 1st, my car on the 12th, my car insurance on the 24th, and so on. This will allow you to have a visual of when all of your bills are due. If you want you can also print your sheet out and put display it somewhere you will see it all the time, I like the fridge! After you've written down all of the due dates of your bills you are going to add the amounts of all the bills that are due. If you are writting down the amounts of bills like your electricity or water then just put down the average so you have an idea.

Here is the fun part, you get to figure out what to do with the extra money. After your done detailing all of your bills, due dates, and amounts, add all the amounts together and subtract them from your income so you know how much extra money you have each month. Once you know how much you have after your bills you need to figure out how much you pay each month in groceries, fast food, gas, convenience stores, entertainment, and misc. spending. For an awesome free program that helps you do all of this visit Acemoney Lite. This program will actually let you download all of your transactions from your online banking and it will help itamize your spendings and even graph it out for a nice visual picture.

The hardest part about budgetingbudgeting is getting used to not spending more then is budgeted out for you. What I like to do is use the envelope system. I have an envelope for gas, food, entertainment, and fun. I figure out how much on average I spend on each of these things and then fill up each envelope with that amount (make sure you fill up the fun and entertainment with smaller bills so that you don't take a twenty with you when you only need five and then spend the other fifteen just because it's in your wallet). When your envelopes run out of cash that's it, you're done for that month. This forces you to know exactly what you have and exactly what will be left over after you take some money out. DO NOT TOUCH YOUR EXTRA CASH! The reason for budgeting is to save money and make sure you have enough for every day life. If you start to use the extra money you have left over after bills and your envelops then you're not doing any good.

Check back later for more advice on budgeting.





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