Budgeting 101

Effective ways to manage your money

Happy couple planning their budget

Need to plan out what expenses you have every month and how your take-home pay will meet these expenses? A budget is a fundamentally important tool to have and follow.  Without some sort of budget we often find ourselves spending more money than we have coming in and that can cause some serious distress.  This becomes even more challenging when a couple is sharing a bank account.  It’s easy to get lost in what money is available and what needs to be saved for an expense. 

 

There are a number of tools out there to help you in with this.  Budgeting is something literally everyone deals with every week/month, unless you are fortunate to have an endless supply of cash coming in.  

 

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How to budget:

Step 1. 

Let’s start with basics here.  Grab a notebook/legal pad/excel workbook, whatever you are comfortable with.

Step 2.

Next, let’s document all of your expenses; those that are the same every month and those that are variable. 

Step 3.

Now you have a your net funds available after your monthly expenses.  You can see then what you have left each month.

Budgeting Applications

While an old school paper budget or a Microsoft Excel workbook budget works fine for budgeting, there are now many more resources out there.  Have a look here: 

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