Monday, February 23, 2009

Come up with a Personal Budgeting Strategies

By Kay Riter

When building a personal budget, you have to cater to your own needs and situation. You cant look at a general budget and decide it will work for you. Do you have an extra long commute to work? $100 per month on gas probably wont work for you. Do you have a family of eight? $300 per month for food might feed half of you, but not the whole family.

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.

Try to cut back as much as you can on expenses. If you are spending money on things you don't need and don't really want, you are passing up a lot of savings. You need to get in the mindset that life isn't about stuff.

Don't become a stingy saver, and don't be unreasonable. Sure, you could save hundreds of dollars of month if you lived on Ramen noodles alone, but that is both unhealthy and not plausible. Come up with a good balance.

If you are in debt, especially heavy debt, you might have to be somewhat stingy until you pay off your debt. Downgrade wherever you can and only spend when you absolutely have to. The more you cut out, the faster you'll pay off your debt.

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. - 20767

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