The very best way to stay on top of your finances is to have an up-to-date monthly budget consisting of all of your incomings outgoings. One of the worst things that you can do with regard to your finances is to bury your head in the sand, and hope that it will all look after itself. Through not being aware of your financial situation, you can easily find yourself in trouble, that could have easily been avoided. And so the best course of action is to be aware of all of your finances, and use a monthly budget which can help you to stay on track, and here is what you’ll need to put it together.
Template
The beauty of using a budget is that you can write it in any kind of format that you wish, whatever makes it easier for you to understand. If you can’t think of a good way to write down the budget, you can use some budget templates from the internet, which offer various options for anyone looking to start budgeting.
The Essentials
First of all you need to pay attention to the items in your budget that will not be changing any time soon. For example your basic income is likely to stay the same each month, so this will of course go into the income side of the budget. In terms of your expenditure, there are also some costs which will stay the same each month. For example your rent/mortgage will be the same each month, as will services such as wifi, gas, electric, water and council tax. Each monthly budget that you draw up should start with these.
Additional
Each month our finances change a little, perhaps someone owed you money and they have just paid you, perhaps this is the month that you car insurance comes out for the year. Whatever the costs or income values are, these will be filed further down on your budget. Be sure that your budget features every amount of income and expenditure regardless of how sporadic or how small, remember that the budget can change each month, and this is how you can best stay on top of what is going on.
Staying Strong
Simply drawing a budget and then writing down your income and expenditure is only half of what you need to do when looking after your finances, you also need to stick to your budgets. For example, after making a budget for the month ahead, including everything that you stand to earn and spend, you should earmark how much is left, to spend on additional items or to save. Once you have made these figures available, it is vital that you do not overspend, unless it is absolutely necessary of course. Overspending or ignoring the budget makes the whole process worthless, so be sure to stay strong and stick to your figures.
Keep the budget up, stick to the budget and you won’t have any more financial, woes.
