Browsing Tag

smart budget

Debt

4 Reasons Your Budget May Not Work In Helping You Achieve Your Debt Relief Program

If you are to take up a debt relief program, you will definitely need to make use of a budget. A budget is one sure way to achieve your debt relief program goals because it is a plan that will map out the day to day habits that will help you achieve financial freedom.

Since your initial budget is a plan of your intentions and goals based on current circumstances, it will naturally have to be adapted to new circumstances without having necessarily to change your goals.

If you can keep track of the reasons why budgets don’t work for most people, you will be in a better position to make a more refined budget that is easier to follow.

Below are 4 ways that most people fail to maintain a budget that they can follow:

1. Give yourself time to adjust to your budget

Since by the time you are making your budget you have probably not been monitoring your income and expenses, it will be difficult to pinpoint exact numbers that relate to your day to day or periodic expenses.

You need to set a reasonable financial target and then try to adjust and refine your expenses to fit in with your goal. This can often take a period of up to 3 months. Don’t quit on your budget too early.

March 31, 2015

Budgeting

Little Treats Cost More Than You Think

If you suggest to someone that a little treat they’re planning is a waste of money, you run the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon. After all, the people thinking about treating themselves will tell you that it’s relative pennies and well affordable.

They may well be right, but it’s far more probable that they aren’t. That’s because they set the amount off against their monthly total, seeing it in isolation of everything else so, yes, the cost seems miniscule.

October 18, 2012

Budgeting

Charting A New Course To Financial Security

Let a simple graphic help you get the financial picture

If you’re on a fixed income, you understand the challenge of finding extra savings to build a nest egg for retirement, major expenses or simply to leave something behind for your family. Aside from the difficult — and in some cases, impossible — task of finding a way to supplement that income, the most important first step is getting a handle on where all the money goes.

A pie chart does the trick. And you don’t need to know how to use a computer to create one.

If you’re unfamiliar with a pie chart, the idea is simple. Gather your spending data; break it into categories like food, utilities and gas; and convert the information into a circular graphic that displays each category as a color-coded percentage of the whole “pie” (which represents 100 percent of your spending).

You can do this by hand, of course, but who has the time? If you’re handy with Microsoft Excel or a free online service like Google Spreadsheets, you can create one in minutes. A few Web sites, such as Chartpart.com or Yellowpipe, make it even easier. Just plug some number and categories into a form and you’ll get a custom pie chart that can even be embedded in a blog or personal Web site.

Once your information is displayed graphically, you may be surprised by the results. It’s one thing to watch Game of Thrones on HBO and feel like you’re getting something of value; it’s entirely another to see that those 100 channels and premium offerings are sucking up five percent of your annual income. Better to ditch the cable, get a digital antenna, subscribe to an online DVD service like Netflix and stash the savings in a “rainy day” or retirement account.

Is your Starbucks habit having unintended consequences? Does your pricey subscription to People mean the difference between living small and saving big?

Such small, incremental changes to wasteful are much easier to identify with some organization. And those modifications are critical to ramping up your savings for the things in that really matter, like a more comfortable retirement or a safe landing when life spins out of control.

It’s as easy as, well, pie.

August 6, 2012