Top 5 Tips On How To Create A Home Budget

By • Jan 12th, 2009 • Category: Savings

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Create A Home Budget

Why learn how to make a home budget? If you’ve been reading the newspapers and stories on the Internet, you have probably heard that creating a budget is crucial. It’s only by tracking our incoming and outgoing money that we can see our personal financial situation. We’ll know how much we spend every month and exactly who it goes to. We’ll be able to find places to cut our expenses and put the difference toward savings, or an emergency fund, or debt so take the first steps to create a home budget.

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If you have debt, particularly credit card debt, you will want to make sure you pay it off as quickly as possible. Every dollar of debt you have is costing you money. Instead of putting that money to work for you, you are letting someone else build their wealth from it. Every dollar of debt you pay off is like a raise for you. More money for you to use to your own advantage. If you have debt, put as much money as you can, every month, in to paying that debt off.

1. Start with the family. Get your family together and explain your finances. Discuss how you are creating a budget and why. Talk about the need to live within your means. Maybe even talk about rewards for saving money, such as a family outing or vacation (paid with saved cash, of course).

2. Sort your expenses for the coming year. Start with your largest expense. Then, your next biggest. Continue listing them, from largest to smallest. Leave nothing out. Then, begin to look for ways to reduce the amount of money going out, from the top to the bottom. Every little bit, adds up. Hint: Look at what you are spending on food. There’s almost always room to cut, here.

3. When listing your costs, try to make sure you get EVERY one of them. Stamps, vending machine visits, coffee, etc. The more you can list, the better you’ll be able to work with your budget. Start tracking every fund ,as well as, long term savings to your costs categories. By assigning money to these two categories, every month, you will be preparing for, and protecting, your future. For the emergency fund, your goal should be at least 6 to 10 months of expenses. After you hit that goal, you can reduce your donations to this fund.

5. Ensure to include expense categories for recurring, but not frequent items. Items like tires or dentist visits don’t happen very often, but they do happen. Setting aside funds in these categories will help keep you on track and away from items like your emergency fund!

These tips should help you start learning how to make a home budget. It’s not a complete plan, but these tips should help point you in the right direction. Every day you wait is another day where you have no control of your money, your savings, or your future. Do it for you. Do it for your family. Just do it.

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 Top 5 Tips On How To Create A Home Budget
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