How to Do a Simple Home Budget
Creating a home budget system is a sure fire way to get your money to go further, and it costs nothing. Once you have all your expenses and your income laid out in front of you, it becomes a lot easier to see where your money is disappearing to, which enables you to do something about it.
If you have a computer, creating a home budget system is really easy. (Even if you don't have a computer, it is still a very good idea.) If you don't have a program like Word or Excel on your computer, you can download a lookalike compatible office suite of programs from Openoffice dot org absolutely free, which will do the job perfectly. I use them myself. If you don't know how to use these programs that's also OK; then you just type all your budget items into any wordprocessor or notepad.
OK, to start you need to split the page into 2 columns and put all your income in the one column. List everything so that you know exactly where the money is coming from.
Then, in the other column, list all your expenses, even the tiny ones. If necessary, keep all your slips and receipts from shopping, and enter them into the expenses side. Don't forget to also enter unseen things like debit orders and insurance deductions that the bank automatically takes out of your account each month.
Also list stuff like tips and donations that you may have made.
Once you have all the info entered, then add up the two sides and check if your income is more or less than your expenses. If it's more (Hallelujah!) then try and save the excess (or at least some of it) in a high interest account, or pay off some high interest debt with it.
If the expenses are more than the income, then you need to go through the list of expenses and see what you can remove. What we do is we budget in advance for the month ahead. For example, we budget say $15 for newspapers: we take the $15 in cash, and put it in a little plastic zip lock bag, and we keep it in a cash box until we use it. And we do the same with other stuff like Friends birthday presents, Postage stamps, Petty cash (ie emergency money) and so on. But if it's a bad month, we would leave out certain things. In other words, we prioritize our needs, and do away with things we can live without. So we would leave the Newspapers bag empty, for example, and just get our news off the radio or TV. It's not always pleasant, but at least we stay out of debt.
If you are using a Word processor like Word or Openoffice, you can create a table, and add some formula, and the program will add up the columns for you, so that as you change things, you can see how it's affecting your bottom line. This makes it a lot easier to work things out. Also, each month you just copy the last months budget document, change the date at the top and about half of the figures (a lot stay the same each month, like rent, insurance, etc) and you get the budget done in half an hour less time.
It normally takes about 1-2 hours to do this budget, and it's time well spent.
Duncan Kelly
P1.4-Tr budget might be used as war chest in 2010--solon - Inquirer.net
Kaine seeks options for budget cuts - Richmond Times Dispatch
Charlottesville Daily Progress Kaine seeks options for budget cuts Richmond Times Dispatch, VA - Timothy M. Kaine has ordered the heads of state agencies to prepare three sets of budgets for 2009-10 reflecting spending cuts of 5 percent, 10 percent and ... Breaking News: Budget Cuts Ordered Gov. Kaine orders agencies to plan for up to 15% in cuts Kaine orders state agencies to address shortfall -State Budget in California Sets Record for Tardiness - New York Times
Downey Patriot State Budget in California Sets Record for Tardiness New York Times, United States - As of Tuesday, the state budget was 64 days late, and counting so long overdue that it has eclipsed the record for tardiness set by the budget impasse of ... UPDATE 1-Record California budget impasse to press on lawmakers break record for late budget Stalled budget overshadows other efforts of 2008 California ... -