Finding yourself knee deep in debt and unable to pay your bills is usually a situation that that did not happen overnight. In addition, usually it means that you have problem handling money. Setting up a budget is one of the first things you should do when you find yourself in a situation like this. It’s much better to learn how to manage your money than learning how not to pay your credit card debts.
The mind plays tricks on us. We believe that we make more money than we actually do. If our salary is $36,000 a year or $3,000 a month, we don’t actually get to spend $3,000 a month. After federal and state taxes, FICA deductions, Health care deductions, and a slew of other miscellaneous deductions - we may have less than $2000 a month of spendable income.
Conversely, we spend more money than we think we do. The quarters for parking meters, the occasional night out, the various city licenses and such – are insignificant amounts on their own, but all add up to balloon our monthly spending. Being forced to put in writing all of our monthly income and expenses helps us to control our monies. It makes it harder to fool ourselves and our real money situation.
A monthly income and expense budget will help you to track where your money is going and allow you to consciously reduce extraneous expenses that you can do without. It will help to reign in your spending and get it under control.
Many people mistakenly believe that setting up a budget means investing in expensive sophisticated programs. But all you really need is a pen and paper. Whatever method you use, it should allow you to reconcile your income / expense items at each month’s end.
Your budget plan basically consists of two portions. You’ll have the monthly income portion that contains your anticipated income for that month. This includes salary, dividend investment income, alimony income payments, Social Security, and so on. Start by writing down the source and dollar amount of all income you receive. Follow that with a list of all expenses that you expect to incur for that monty. This includes all expenses. Mortgage bills, monthly rent, food, restaurant bills, alimony payments, and so on. Don’t worry if you can’t come up with them all immediately, you can always add to the list.
Now you put the budget plan through a trial run. Test if for a month. If you need to adjust it, do so. If you discover an expense that you left out, add it in. Add any extra income that you forgot about.. By the end of the first month, you should have a monthly budget plan that pretty much reflects your actual income and spending habits.
The key is not to stop here, but to use the plan month after month. When the month ends, compute your net income by subtracting that month’s expenses from the month’s income. If your expenses exceeds income, continue to find expenses that you can lower or eliminate until your budget is in balance.













