Ok, back to the grind! Been almost two weeks since my last post (that's what a stomach virus, two weekends, a holiday, and the start of college football will do to you).
First, get your spreadsheet ready. (Look here
X)
Got it? Good.
We have covered the basics already, so if you need a refresher check out the previous posts. Today we are going to get right to the
nitty gritty stuff (If you need a good laugh, click
here.)
On the
Budget Sheet, the first column contains the descriptions you set on the top of your
Entry Sheet; today we are going to enter our budget into the second column.
Oh crap...the "B" word again.
Don't worry, we are going to make this one look easy; find your
Income vs. Expenses sheet that we used in the very first post. Got it?
Ok, now the goal is to enter the most important expenses first--think
Needs.
So, just go down the list and enter your budget for each category. If your rent/mortgage is $700 per month, enter $700. If the minimum payment on your student loan is $125, enter $125--or add up the minimum payment amounts of all of your student loans and enter it here.
Again, start with the most important (i.e. if you don't pay it someone will eventually come looking for you) and work your way to through the
Needs. Once you have budgeted those, then enter your
Wants. (Don't forget to enter your
Debt as well.) Once you have entered everything, take a look at your total at the bottom of that column (it should have a line above it and a thicker line below it).
How does that compare with your income? If it is less, great! Compare your budget with the
50-30-20 rule and see if you are allotting twenty percent to debt (on top of the minimum payment). If you are, then you will have to decide what you want to do with that extra money in your budget (As a bit of advice, my two choices would be
Debt or
Savings.)
If your total budget is more than your income, you need to do some additional trimming (on the
Wants first!). No matter what, try to budget every dollar that is coming in on a regular basis to a category (this will help control any urges to splurge money wastefully).
Finally, this is what you should see at the bottom of that page:
When you enter
income on the
Entry Sheet (i.e. paychecks, bonuses, gifts, etc...enter everything!) it goes into the
Paychecks cell here. The same goes for
church/charity gifts--these get subtracted from paychecks before the expenses do.
Net, is your income less said
church/charity gifts. This is compared to the actual total of your expenses for the month, which will then calculate your
Gain/Loss--this is another way to help you fine tune your budget. Below this line you will see two cells labeled
Savings/Debt; again this goes back to my suggestion that if you have any
extra money you divide it between these two categories.
The
Gain/Loss cell also helps if your income isn't steady/the same every month. If this is the case, you can take this and either add or subtract it to the
income column in your next month's budget.
Good luck!
