Most of us went all the way through school with little or no education on how to budget money. We learned a lot of useless stuff and evidently money was rated below that. Why don’t they teach this in school well it could be because very few people have learned how to budget money including teachers.
There are three things you need to know before you can even start to set up a budget. You need to know your income, you need to know your expenses,, and then you have to make adjustments so that your income is greater than your expenses. Pretty straightforward stuff right? Except very few people actually budget their money.
First of all you need to know how much money you earn, for some people this is easy you look at your W-2 form and there it is, but for seasonal workers, small business people, it gets a little more complicated than that. If you receive income from a lot of different sources for a realistic value of what you actually earn itemize them, put them down on paper. Include all income, now is not the time to be hide money from the IRS you are just fooling yourself, you need to have factual figures here of your true income otherwise you will actually think you’re in good financial shape because you know you got this extra income somewhere, but that’s not always true.
The second thing we need to do is to find out how much money you actually spend each month again include everything even those items that your spouse does not know about like that Latte down at the coffee stand, that you get on a daily basis. It helps to break this down a little.
Fixed nonnegotiable expenses, things we actually cannot do without, we all need food lodging medical care basic clothing insurance property taxes a car may be necessary where you live, you get the idea.
Include all variable expenses now, car maintenance, electricity, heating, these can vary throughout the year you need to calculate them and come up with an average monthly amount.
None essential expenses like eating out coffee at Starbucks, weekend getaways, extravagant vacations, fancy clothing, motorcycles, ATV’s, if you use them, write them down, realize these are wants, not needs. Now total these all up, fixed expenses, variable expenses, and non-essential expenses,there you now have your total expenses.
Now we have reached the make adjustments phase, subtract your expenses from your income and if you have some money left over at the end of the month you have got yourself a budget. Realistically most people will not have a workable budget at this point, again it’s not really your fault if you don’t have a budget, because nobody ever took the time to show you how to set up a budget, much less help you stay on a budget. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist at this point to figure out that you should reduce your nonessential spending habits and that’s what they usually are is habits, they are your wants, not your needs. Pare your expenses down so you have some money left over at the end of the month and you now have your first monthly budget.