Budgeting

MONEY! Any one who is alive will be affected by it. But not everyone is taught how to budget. Here are 4 steps to budgeting for beginners.

1) Know how much money is coming to your household every month. From your job, maybe a you have a side gig where you play guitar on the weekends and make a few extra bucks, or when you babysit for your neighbor twice a week. Add everything up that comes in your household on a regular basis.

2) Next you need to make a list of all your bills and spending you do on a regular basis in a month. 
Food
Gas
Bills (Electricity, Garbage, water, phone)
Anything else you spend regularly in a month.

If you don't know guess or look at your online banking and add up how much you spent in a month. If you still don't know keep your receipts for this coming month and calculate your spending. Then add then all up.  

3)Subtract what how much goes out to what comes in the month.  That is how much you have left over.

Question is do you have any left over. Are you in the negative? Or are you in the positive? How much are you in the positive?

If you are lacking is there something you are spending on a regular basis that you don't really need. Maybe your phone bill is high can you cut back on your phone plan? What at the grocery store do you buy that you don't really need? Do you have a monthly subscription like amazon prime, other spending that is more of a want than a need.  It's great to have nice things but not if it cost you to be in the negative at the end of the month.

If you do have excess save it.  Put it away. You will have other bills come up like insurance for the car maybe every six months or registration for your car.  Or an emergency like a trip to the doctor you were not planning on.  If you have a hard time saving maybe ask someone you trust to hold it for you. If you don't have anyone take it to the bank and put it in savings or somewhere you won't touch it.  

There are times you just can't save but the times you have excess or were gifted with money you weren't expecting put it away. 

4) Now that you know how much comes in and how much is going out decide what is a reasonable amount of money you should be spending for your different items use your money for. You can make envelopes for each item. Make a Food/Grocery envelope. Make a Gas Envelope, Make a bill envelope. Maybe even an entertainment envelope like for the movies, going out to dinner, etc.  Put a reasonable amount of money you are willing to spend on those items and stick then in that envelope. Do what you can to spend only what is in the envelope. If you have money at the end of the month in that envelope then you can either leave it there and have a little extra for that item, for an example food or gas.  Or you can take it out and put it in savings and start over with the amount of money you decided for that item for the month.  

And that my friend is Budgeting for Beginners.  

If you have any questions or comments we would love to hear from you. 

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