If You Want to Save,
Budgeting Is the Way!

Budgeting can be easy-peasy or complicated galore. It’s up to you what you want it to be.

The basic budget has all of your income sources listed and all of your expenditures listed. No matter how big or how small. So list the $100.00 for your month’s worth of Star Bucks – that’s expenditure – you need to know where your money is going.

In fact, a good way to get a handle on where your money is going and to set up an as accurate as possible budget, is to keep a money journal for a month. Write down all your expenditures and keep the receipts, then at month’s end you’ll have a relatively concrete tally of your expenditures. This is an easy exercise, not to mention a good one, especially if you really do find yourself saying more often than not at month’s end ‘Where did it all go?’ This exercise will tell you.

Keep an envelope on you at all times, or in your vehicle, somewhere you can easily reach it to put those all important receipts into, then either at month’s end or as you go along, record each expenditure, ALL expenditures, in your money journal. That is all bills paid, groceries, those cute shoes that were 50% off, the 22 Starbucks coffees, etc. So a page out of your journal might look like this:

After you’ve seen where all your money goes, its time to set up a budget. Let’s say on monthly bills (including rent) you dole out $307.00, a run of groceries per month is $200.00, odds and ends run $100.00, and fun money is tallying $150.00. That’s almost $1150 per month. Now if you make $1500.00 per month, that’s great. If you’re only pulling in $1000.00 per month, well…it’s a good thing you found this page!

So your basic budget would look like this:

The above example, while very basic, outlines what every good budget sheet should have: ALL sources of income and ALL expenditures. And as a beginner, I suggest you go basic. Then once you’re sure you’ve got a handle on the basics you can move on to more advanced budgeting, such as creating separate accounts for savings, emergencies, maintenance, clothing, special occasions, etc., and budgeting for life!