Saturday, February 14, 2009

Come up with a Personal Budgeting Strategies

By Kay Riter

When you are coming up with a budget, you are going to have to specify it to yourself. Don't think that there is a budget that someone out there came up with that you must follow. Your needs are different than the needs of everyone else. A single person might only spend $200 on food every month. This doesn't mean you have to feed your family of 6 on $200 a month.

There are some basic personal budgeting strategies that you should try to follow to make the best budget for you. Start by recording all the money you make. Include everything from your regular salary and tips to overtime, interest income, and investment income. Include everything you make.

Also, don't give up on opportunities to make money, especially if you need it. Are you a teacher? Don't pass up tutor opportunities. As a certified teacher, you can make a nice wad of cash in 30 to 60 minutes. As a business professional, do you get asked for advice a lot? If you are spending hours a week advising people, you should charge for it. You spent a lot of time, money, and effort to learn what you know, why should others get it for free?

Next, write down all your expenses. Include everything you spend money on, no matter what. Even that $2 pack of gum you buy every week can add up fast. Add them up for an entire month. This will help you whittle down the expenses you don't really need when you start planning your budget.

Cut out expenses that you don't want and don't need. You might be throwing your money away just because you don't think about where you are actually spending your money. Don't be this way. Think before you spend.

Design a plan you can stick with. Don't be so outrageous with your budget cutting out expenses that severely impede how you live. For example, if you think you can save $200 a month by not driving anywhere, but you have a 30 minute commute to work, well, you can figure it out. Its not going to work.

On the other hand, if you have tens of thousands of dollars in debt or more, you may seriously need to consider a downgrade on everything. If your rent or mortgage is too expensive, downgrade. You need to do whatever you can to secure your financial future.

Keep at your budget. Make a budget that will benefit you the most. You need a good balance between saving and spending. If it's to hard to stop spending, you need to get some help and work on your spending addiction. If you can't stop spending, that is exactly what it is, an addiction.

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