When building a personal budget, you have to cater to your own needs and situation. You can’t 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 won’t 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.
If you are trying to design a good budget you need to follow some basic personal budgeting strategies. First, make sure you are recording all the money you make and that you are making the most that you can. Don’t just include your salary and think that tips, side jobs, overtime, or interest don’t matter. It is all money that you are spending.
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, you should really examine all of your expenses. Write down every expense for 2 to 4 weeks. Don’t miss anything, no matter how small the expense. Analyze where you are spending your money. Anything that you could easily live without cut out, and anything that has a cheaper alternative, swap. Some people are very lenient where they cut back on expenses. Even if you aren’t in debt, you could save a lot of money to put away for retirement. You’d be surprised how much you can save.
Design a plan you can stick with. Don’t be so outrageous with your budget cutting out expenses that severely impede how you live. For example, if you think you can save $200 a month by not driving anywhere, but you have a 30 minute commute to work, well, you can figure it out. It’s not going to work. On the other hand, if you have tens of thousands of dollars in debt or more, you may seriously need to consider a downgrade on everything. If your rent or mortgage is too expensive, downgrade. You need to do whatever you can to secure your financial future.
Finally, stick with it. This is the most important part of keeping a budget. You have to stick with it! If something seems impossible to do, than modify it, but this doesn’t mean giving up entirely on the whole budget.
