10 Easy Steps to Create a Budget

Surprise! My second article for this week of personal finance and economics topics is about creating a budget. And you thought you could actually have better finances without working on it, didn’t you? πŸ˜‰

Just so happens this is a guest post over at Stephen’s site Balanced Existence. Here is the link:

Budgeting Made Easy

It is a longer article that will turn into a 2 part and maybe a 3 part series. There is a lot to learn my friends. For those of you that have internet ADD please read the short list.

  1. Get some paper and a pencil.
  2. Make two columns
  3. Write down your income and expenses
  4. Put your take home pay in column 1
  5. Put “fixed” expenses in column 2
  6. Figure out what is left over
  7. If there isn’t much, find a way to lower your fixed expenses. (Or go make more money!)
  8. Consider how much you will save and what your pre-tax investments will be.
  9. Consider your variable expenses, aka your “non-fixed expenses”.
  10. Allocate properly and zero out your balance sheet at the bottom.

If this all makes sense to you read my second article at Balanced Existence in January. If this doesn’t make sense to you read all the glorified details on my much longer guest post…

Budgeting Made Easy

Tomorrow there will be another exciting post about personal finance and the economy. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe to my RSS feed by reader or by email so you don’t miss a thing! ;-)

3 thoughts on “10 Easy Steps to Create a Budget”

  1. Hi Alex,

    Thanks for swinging by! I certainly do agree. Ive pared down my expenses to the bare essentials and I am one of the most frugal people I know. While this is a good course for many people I don’t think many people want to lead their lives that way. For them, I recommend a budget. πŸ˜‰

    Cheers,
    Jeremy

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