This weeks money saving tips include how to cut your electric bill, traveling on the cheap, and inexpensive ways to be romantic. Learning how to budget is an important skill that is necessary if you are going to be able to save money. Here are the basic steps:
How to Budget
- Set Goals – One of the most important steps in creating a budget is to write down both personal and financial goals. Personal goals could include getting marrieds or getting a masters degree. Financial goals could include buying a new home or early retirement. By articulating your goals and estimating the cost, you are more likely to take concrete steps toward achieving them.
- Track Spending - Without understanding where your money is going it will be impossible to know if you are saving enough money to meet monthly expenses or leave enough to achieve your goals. There are many ways to track spending but why do it manually when you can automate this time consuming task? Most banks include spending reports with online banking and is a great way to instantly see where you are spending your money. Other ways to track spending include Mint.com
which allows you to create budgets as well as link all of your financial accounts.
- Create Budget - Create categories based on your spending analysis and goals that you have set for yourself. This step involves prioritizing and negotiating your spending with your spouse and can be difficult if you don’t share the same goals. Setup your budget with a free app from Mint.com
- Monitor Progress - Like any good plan you will need to monitor and adjust when necessary to stay on track. If you find the amount you budgeted for a category is insufficient then you will need to take money from another category that has a surplus. One of the biggest reasons people are not successful in staying within budget
Best Money Saving Tips
Ten Ways to Save Money on Your Electric Bill This Summer by Money Q&A
Saving Money or Earning Money Where to Put your Priority? by One Cent at a Time
4 Ways to Save Money Traveling by Thirty Six Months
Romance on the Cheap by Newlyweds on a Budget
Carnivals Mentioning The Frugal Toad
Financial Simplicity Carnival – The Greaster Edition | Modest Money
Carnival of Personal Finance #332 – Beating Broke | Beating Broke
Carnival Of Financial Planning – Edition #233 | Boomer and Echo
The Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #30 – My University Money
Totally money Carnival – Millionaire Teacher Edition
The Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #32 – Young And Thrifty | Young And Thrifty
Good points! The most important aspect of your suggestions is monitoring. I monitor and keep trying to improve or reduce the expense.
That is where most people struggle with finances. It does no good to create a budget and then not monitor your spending!
I second that. “What gets measured gets managed.” You can’t forget to measure your progress.
As someone who’s been meaning to start an official budget, these tips are helpful. I’ve been careful with my money lately, but without actual goals and proper monitoring, it is far too easy to let my spending slip and not be as disciplined.
I use the Mint app to keep track of my finances. It categorizes transactions automatically so it makes tracking your spending easy!
Budgeting? Did someone mention budgeting? Heard the echo across the ‘Net and after traipsing far and near, found myself here.
The most important tip to give about budgeting is to make it personal, not an abstract thing that can easily “go away”. A written budget is to be internalized, becoming a fabric of everyday living.
Couldn’t agree more. That’s why the first step should be to set goals. If you don’t have goals, a budget is an exercise in futility! Thanks for stopping by Budgeting Guy!
Thanks for liking my article and mentioning it here. have a good rest of the weekend.
You’re welcome SB, you do the same!
I had to spend a lot of money to help my parents last month so I’m gonna be on a tight budget for the next few months. Time for me to start eating pbj for lunch! -Sydney
We like to keep an excel spreadsheet of all our debts and keeps tracks of how much we paid each month. It’s good to keep track so you can stay focus on your goals
Creating a budget is always a plus point! And yeah, all the other money left apart from the budget can be spent at the club! (:D