Money Saving Tips :: Monthly Budget Planner
Monthly Budget Planner:
The Need for a Monthly Budget Planner in Your Life
Define Your Monthly Income
If you are going to draw up a monthly budget planner, step one in the process is figuring out what your income will be. Your most basic income will be your salary, and your spouse’s salary, if you’re married. Then there are things like bonuses, dividends, interest, and any sort of investment income you might have.
If you work for a company that reimburses you for various expenses, include that in your monthly budget planner. Gifts might not be a regular source of income, but it doesn’t hurt to include those, plus a column for “Other” as there always seems to be something that doesn’t fit into another category on a monthly budget planner.
List all these headers in one column, then make a second column labeled “Expected” and a third called “Actual”. This way your monthly budget planner can keep track of what you expect your income to be, and what it actually is.
Outline Your Expenses
The next step in your monthly budget planner is to figure out what you need to cover your expenses. So, you make a column of everything you pay out on a regular basis. That’ll be mortgage/rent, home insurance, auto insurance, auto payment(s) (if any), auto expenses (gas, oil etc.), bank charges, groceries, clothing, childcare (if any), and then your utilities.
It’s important to break them down individually: gas, phone, water, electric, cable TV, Internet, sewage, garbage, and any others you might have. Then there are the little things that you may not have every month, but you need to keep track of. These can be things like eating out, visits to the barber/salon, medical/dental, entertainment and recreation, household repairs, gifts you give, travel expenses, subscriptions to magazines, spending money, club membership dues, and taxes.
If you have credit cards or student loans, or some other long-term bills, list them on your monthly budget planner too. As with your income, then put down a column for the expected expense, and one for the actual.
An Expense You Don’t Expect
One thing that many people overlook when drawing up a monthly budget planner is the “expense” of savings. Too often people don’t think about saving; they put it off thinking they can do it another time. Yet, it is something you need to be aware of, and should include in your monthly budget planner.
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