Where to Start to Create your Budget
Many of us have asked the question, How do I start my budget? I know I was there once, till I got help. When I started my budget I did it on a piece of paper. I created neat lines and counted all of the spaces I needed. This was very time consuming and limiting. My budget could have changed at anytime. Then, I thought we are in the computer age. I think it might be a little easier to do a budget on a computer. When creating your budget remember to list all of your bills, remember to list all of the amounts and than put your budget on a computer spreadsheet.
When I start to list all my bills, I seem to forget all of my little spend areas. I would buy coffee, go out to eat, buy items at target and extras along the way. When I made my list I started with the basic; rent, bills, food, gas, car payment, and entertainment. I than would start numbering them to give myself an outline of my bills.
Outline of bills:
- Rent
- Gas bill
- Electric
- Water
- Car payment
- Savings
- Food
- Gas for travel
- Shopping
- Entertainment
- Restaurant
This is how my budget was started. You may need to add others to your list or take away from mine. Now that you have a list for your budget you can start adding in the amount of each bill.
There are some bills which stay the same and some which will fluctuate a bit. With the bill that stay the same you can just put in the amount right by your outline of bills. For the bills which fluctuate, you need to add the highest bill with the lowest bill and divide by two. This will give you a good average for that bill.
How to find the average for the bill:
- Highest bill + Lowest bill
- Bills/ 2
- equals average amount of bill
Now that you have an outline of your bills with the amount next to them you can place your budget in the spreadsheet.
Starting a spreadsheet may seem overwhelming and hard to do. There will be five columns for my budget, which will be on my spreadsheet. There will be thirteen rows in my spreadsheet to place my budget on. This is how it can look when you place your budget on a spreadsheet.
Budget spreadsheet
List of monthly bills | Total amount of monthly bills | Addition/ Subtracting | Total amount of income subtracted from bills | Amount left over from bills |
Rent |
||||
Gas Bill | ||||
Electric Bill | ||||
Water Bill | ||||
Car Payment | ||||
Savings | ||||
Food | ||||
Gas For Travel | ||||
Shopping | ||||
Entertainment | ||||
Restaurants | ||||
Total Bills |
Now you have a spreadsheet which you can used to keep your budget on and make changes with out a lot of work.
We have now answer the age old question of how to create a budget. Getting on a budget will help you lead a stress free financial life and create the financial life you have always wanted.