Tuesday 19 March 2013

Understanding How To Create A Budget Is Imperative

By Vernell Hunter


An efficient monetary plan may be regarded as mundane but it should be done every month without fail. Knowing how to create a budget allows one to be able to dodge any unexpected bullets and keep control of their finances. Any one that does not commit to budgeting with their money will very quickly find their finances spinning out of control.

Firstly, one needs to gather all financial statements that one can find. These would include bank statements, investment information and current utility bills in order to get an idea of what the monthly income and expenditure is. The main reason for this step is to be able to see what the average monthly amounts are.

Next write down all sources of income, regardless of the amount. If a business owner, then all revenues need to be recorded and it will be necessary to do a personal and business plan separately. Where one is earning a regular paycheck then only the net salary after deductions must be recorded; all income amounts must be combined to get a total amount.

Once income is determined a monthly expenses list must be done. Jot down all expenses that one may have for that specific month. These should be things like repayment of mortgage, car and other loans as well as insurance, utilities, groceries, entertainment and all savings amounts; this should include retirement savings.

This list must then be separated into to specific categories, namely, fixed expenses and variable expenses. Fixed expenditures are things that one tends to have every month and where the amounts are normally about the same every month; like mortgage, internet, cable, insurances, credit card and car repayments. These amounts may not necessarily differ, but form a part of every month's expenditure.

Variables will be all the other items that are necessary but the amounts spent vary from one month to the next. These are gas, entertainment, groceries, holiday savings and other such items. Most of these amounts will be estimates based on previous amounts spent and this is the part of ones budgeting the can be adjusted.

One must then deduct the total expenses from the total income amount and if there is more income than expenditure then it is a good thing. As in this case one will be able to look at saving a bit more each month or alternatively putting extra money onto debt so as to pay it off quicker and save on interest costs. If the two are swapped around then one will have to look at where money can be saved, this is where one will start playing around with the variable expense amounts to try and even the amounts out.

As everything always looks good on paper until put into practice, it would seem that everyone will have to compare what was recorded with what one has, in fact, spent. This needs to be done the last day of each month before budgeting for the following month. Children need to be taught how to create a budget to ensure that they are able to learn to manage their finances correctly when they are adults.




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