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Anticipating Expenses in Your Budget

When establishing a budget, it is important to account for variability. Some monthly expenses change a bit each month, such as your energy bills, others are paid bi-annually or annually instead of monthly, such as taxes, and some pop up unexpectedly. Others expenses may vary in their amounts each month. Knowing how to anticipate your expenses will leave you with a solid budget that is always in the black. First start with the stable expenses, those that do not change from month to month. Some examples might be your car payment, your mortgage payment, or a student loan. You can … Continue reading →

Budgeting For Those With Irregular Incomes

Everybody knows the importance of creating a budget to keep your finances on track. There are some situations that make creating and sticking to a budget difficult. Irregular income is certainly one of these. If one or both wage-earners in a family are self-employed or work at jobs that do not pay on a traditional regularly-timed, predictable earning schedule it is hard to know how much money is going to come through the door each month. Unfortunately, the world does not provide exceptions for those of us with irregular incomes. Your bills are due on the same day every month … Continue reading →

Back-to-School Budget Busters

What is the single most expensive back-to-school item on your child’s list? It likely varies depending on the age of your child, but according to a new report, backpacks are high on the list of back-to-school budget busters. Most kids insist that a new backpack is required back-to-school material despite what their frugal parents might think. However, if you want a backpack to last a couple of years it pays to invest in a good one. No offense to major discount retailers, but $3 clearance packs don’t often fare well against pricey, high quality bags. Prices for a high quality … Continue reading →

Seting Up a Budget in Excel

Let’s pretend that you have Microsoft Word, but you’re feeling a little terrified of Excel. However, you’re looking for a program that will help you set up a simple budget. If you already have Excel on your PC, it’s quite simple to use it as a budgeting program. While you can purchase or download other programs, I generally go with my familiar friend Excel. Here’s how to set up your budget. First, sit down with your significant other and write down all of your categories of spending. If you don’t know what you spend money on, get a notepad and … Continue reading →

Easy Budget Breakdown

Wondering what you should be spending in each category of your budget? Here is an easy breakdown that makes budgeting a breeze. It is just a matter of putting the following percentages into each category. Total up your available income after taxes (take home pay) and then divide it up as follows. One thing that is nice about this method is that you don’t have to agonize over little things, and you can shuffle money around as needed for unexpected expenses or gains. Here are the recommendations inspired by M.P Dunleavey, who writes a column for MSN Money. Ten percent … Continue reading →

Planning a Holiday Budget

Being on track with a budget can really ensure that your spending doesn’t get out of hand. This is true whether you have a food budget or an entire household budget. Having a budget for holiday spending can be very important. We all tend to overspend at this time of year. Let’s get started planning out our budgets. It isn’t very hard to do, but there are certain areas that tend to get overlooked. I’ll help you out on getting everything organized if you would like. Let’s start as always with the list. It isn’t simply a list of people … Continue reading →

Budgeting on a Limited Income

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Whether you are a single parent, a student, retired or have other income situations, learning to live on a limited income can take some serious hard work. We should all have a budget, but if your income is tight… it is even more of an urgent need. When budgeting on a limited income, the key is to prioritize first. You simply might not have enough money to pay for all the standard budgeting categories. The first step will be to make a short list of your top necessities. Good examples are housing, food, utilities and transportation. There may be more, … Continue reading →

Reality Budgets

A common budgeting mistake is not basing your budget on reality. We all want to be able to set aside $200 a month to save for a down payment on a home or our children’s college education. But, if you have to cut your food budget in half to afford to do so… you may find you come up short each month. The key in budgeting is avoiding this common mistake. In order for a budget to actually work, it needs to be first based in reality. During your budget planning, realize that certain things just aren’t in your budget, … Continue reading →

Why Isn’t My Budget Working?

There are so many people that sit down at the beginning of each month and write out a budget. Then they go on about their lives and wonder why they run out of money mid-month. This can be very frustrating for many people. They think that because they have written everything down that it should work. The problem is that they haven’t committed to living the budget. Here are the five things you can do to commit to living the budget. 1) When you finish the budget you should sign it. This may seem silly, but it symbolizes your commit … Continue reading →

Budgets for Kids

As your children grow older, it is important to introduce additional money strategies. While they live in your home, it is the perfect opportunity to teach them critical financial skills that can help them as they move on in the world. Once your children can grasp the concepts of allowances, saving, and tracking spending, the next step is to teach them some basic budget skills. Older kids may even enjoy doing this on the computer. Start by first sitting down with your children and show them your budgeting system. Talk together about the whys and whats of a budget. Explore … Continue reading →