We all know how “difficult” budgeting can be. I have put the word difficult in quotation marks because I believe that despite the fact that we find thirty minutes of sitting in front of your notebook making a budget hard, we will still spend 10 hours in one month complaining of how broke and disorganized we are.
But I’m not here to blame you; because to say the truth, I am there too. So how can you – the guy who loves sleeping on the couch watching TV make a budget in a really really, easy way?
Here are 5 steps:
Asses Your Income
This may sound hard, but I know it is probably the simplest step of all. After all, many of us do spend s lot of time whining about our low income and the fact that we are underpaid, that we sure can tell our income without much hustle.
Asses Your Needs
After you know how much you have, figure out how much you need in the house for basic stuff. And when we talk about basic we are not just talking about food, cloth, and shelter. We are talking about other things such as education for your children, health insurance and so forth. Don’t think of how you will spend your money on booze when you can’t pay for your children’s education.
Asses Your Spending Habit
Surely, this is something that can do between commercials as you watch during TV. Write them down, stating how much each of the items has cost you. After you have done that, compare the expenses that you had the previous month, with what you considered as necessities. Get the difference; this is how much you can save if you really want to. Of course, you cannot restrict your life to necessities; you may need to spend some money on pampering yourself. But this step helps you to block the voice that always tells you that you are earning too little to save anything.
Get a Template from the Internet
Get a template from the internet and use it to make your own budget. Go to any search engine to save yourself the task of creating a spreadsheet from scratch. Once you find one, fill in the required details and leave out those details that you do not need or don’t apply to you in any way.
Balance Your Budget
See how much money you will spend and compare it with the amount of income that you receive. Don’t be shocked to realize that your expenses far outweigh your needs. It just means that for a long time, you have been sinking deeper and deeper into debt (how else can you explain that you have been meeting your needs?)
Once you have prepared the template and realized that your expenses exceed your income, reduce what you can reduce. If you can’t, just look for a second job and get going.
Once you have prepared your budget the simple way, stick to it. A budget is a useless tool if all that happens to it is to be “stored for future use”.
More articles:
- How to Keep Your Cash by Tracking Your Spending
- Budgeting Is A Snap Online
- How to Live Debt Free Without Having To Starve
- How to get Financial Freedom in Five Easy Steps
- What to do to Organize Your Finances
- How to Eat Great on a Budget
- Good Money Habits: Setting Up Your Finances
- Overdraft-Proof Your Bank Account in 6 Steps
- Saving Money without Giving up Life’s Pleasures: Ten Tips
- What to Do when you Need Cash Fast