October 8, 2019 - Paige Murphy
With the holiday season on the horizon, money can start to become a little bit tight. So it’s very important to keep track of how much you are spending and where your money is going. A great tool to help you do just that is by creating a budget! Budgeting is the process of creating a plan to see where you are spending your money; which can also be known as a spending plan. A budget is very important in the fact that it can give you more insight on where your money is going and where you need to cut back. In most cases, this planning process can really help to prioritize your spending and focus your money on the things that are most important to you. A budget is made up of your income and your expenses. Once you have that laid out, then you can effectively see where your money is going. You can budget for specific events that are coming up in your life, or just budget for your daily life. Budgeting activities can provide substantial benefits to your personal financial health.
There are many tools that you can use in order to actually create a budget. First off, there are numerous online templates for monthly budgets that you can use. These templates typically categorize your expenses for you and creates it in an organized manner. This type of template would be great for someone who likes to write things out (you can even stick it on your fridge when you’re done). Another way you can create a budget is by using an Excel spreadsheet. Using a spreadsheet, like Excel, is a great tool in order to lay-out all of your expenses, and it can help you better organize them. This would especially be good for someone who likes to complete their work online and is familiar with the tools Excel has to offer. Lastly, there are also many mobile apps that can make creating a budget easier. One app that is easy to use and navigate is called Mint. This is a free budgeting app that syncs users’ bank accounts, credit cards, and other accounts that you use to spend money to help track incoming and outgoing money. It, also, tracks users’ bills and is able to provide alerts to ensure they won’t miss a payment. The app basically just does all the work of creating a budget for you by taking what you spend your money on and putting it into categories for you. This makes it very easy to see where your money is going and how much you are exactly spending, and this is great for those that are always on their phone and want more on-the-go access to their budget. As you can see, there are so many helpful tools out there that can make it easy to create your budget.
So, once you select your tool that you will use to create your budget on, take into consideration these great tips on how to actually create an effective budget:
Decide how much you made every month and define your income.
Look at every dollar you’ve spent in the last month, pull up your bank statements if needed to get as close to an accurate amount as you can.
Examine and analyze your spending because the money we think we are spending and the money we actually spend tend to be different.
Set yourself a goal! This could be anything from wanting to save money in a particular area, having to pay off debt, etc.
Look where you can cut costs by looking for places where you may be overspending and cut-out things like name brand groceries, trendy clothes, and take-out dinner.
Make sure to take it slow and make it attainable, don’t give yourself unrealistic goals.
Stick with it!!! You will see success!!!
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