Your Ultimate Financial Tool: The Budget

You certainly wouldn’t have a carpenter build a house for you without a set of blueprints or plans would you? Of course not, no telling what it would look like. Rooms missing, closets too small, etc. What a mess that would be.

Yet that is what many of us do when it comes to our finances. We have no plans laid out or blueprints if you will for the financial aspect of our lives. Not very smart of us, is it?

But a budget or money plan is vital to successfully acheive our financial goals. Without one we’ll drift about the money sea without any direction ending up on some remote island of financial disaster.

Figure out with your spouse what your joint financial goals are for both long term and short term. It’s important that you work towards your goals together so plan a course of action to reach them. Every journey begins with one step, so take that first step now and create a realistic budget you can both live with and work towards those financial goals.

When creating a realistic take in to consideration and make allocations for food, clothing, shelter, utilities and insurance and set aside a reasonable amount for entertainment as wll and the occassional luxury item.

Remember Savings Should Always Come First. Even just a small amount saved will help you attain your long term and short term financial goals.

You can do a quick search on the internet for “free budget forms” and that may help you work something out but if you real have struggled with coming up with a bugdet that is workable you may want to give “How to Set-up A Family Budget and Stick To It“ a quick once over. I’ve read it and it’s a tremendous help in setting up a “realistic” budget you can live with.

How to “Set up a Family Budget”

Product: How to “Set up a Family Budget”

Where To Buy: Purchase How to “Set up a Family Budget”

Price: $11.95

Overview: 

This is an in-depth, step by step guide to help you set up and succeed at budgeting. Its goal, as pointed out early on, is this: “. . . we focus in on how to empower families to set up better, more realistic budgets, stick to them and celebrate their successes (and learn from their failures!)” I must say they succeeded in accomplishing their goal.

The misconception of what a budget is, is clearly defined. Practical applications and suggestions are provided in not only discussing the need, benefits and advantage of a budget but also the processes and techniques for building your family budget. There is no fluff in this eBook. Every page provides you with information to help you reach your goal of creating a budget you can stick to. Everything is written in plain English or explained in a manner everyone can understand.

Best Part:

I think the best part of this eBook is how it’s laid out. It covers all the bases: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Simply put, it’s a step by step, hands-on, practical guide to get you where you want your family budget to be. (Side note: It’s a great price for so much information.)

Cons:

It may seem to be a bit lengthy as it isn’t a 10 to 12 page eBook it’s actually over 50 pgs.  But no one says you have to read it all in one sitting.  I found out that once you get started reading the information provided you’ll want to continue reading and begin right there and then to work on your budget plans.  So, I wouldn’t exactly call it a Con unless you were expecting less information.

Living on One Income Part 1

This is part one of two and is a topic that I’m sure I’m not alone in dealing with.

Setting a Clear Budget

There are lots of reasons why families have to live on one income, a new baby, single parent, husband loses his job or simply because one of you wants to spend more time with your children. Whatever your situation is, living on one income can mean it’s time to cut back, or it can mean that now is the opportunity to slice your spending in half by making a few clever budget changes.

Review the basics: look at your cash flow, what money is coming in and what money is going out. The first part is easy, list every penny of income you receive on a regular basis every month. This might be before you give up a second income to see if you can afford it, or this may be your single income that you are living on now.

Then comes the slightly harder part of listing everything that you are committed to spending on every month, this includes your mortgage, car payments, loans, utility bills like electricity, cable and water. Make a full list of everything that you absolutely must pay for every month.

You should add a realistic amount for food and other essentials such as diapers for your little ones or any other costs that you have to pay on a regular basis. These are your essential monthly costs.

Then take away your monthly essential expenses from your monthly income. The difference between the two is how much you have to spend on everything else. Of course this amount might actually be negative and this is actually more often the situation for many families where you suddenly realize you can’t afford your living.

But don’t worry because there are lots of things you can do to reduce costs. First review the items you made for you essential monthly costs.

We all usually have a long list of essential monthly costs so if you can reduce each one by ten dollars here and twenty dollars there it will eventually all add up to make a significant difference.