Good question. While sites like Mint.com are a godsend for those who have online banking, it leaves the rest without such privileges out in the cold. Don’t worry MS Excel has your back.
MS Excel has budget templates that allow you to manually enter in your income and expenses. The best part is that these templates do all of the math for you.
While there are plenty of online budgeting tools available, the biggest and probably the best would be Mint.com.
Mint.com is a free personal finance tool that helps you manage your checking and savings accounts, along with investments, credit card accounts and student loans. The one prerequisite is that you need to be signed up for online banking with your bank to use Mint.com.
Sometimes, despite our best efforts, our bills add up to more than we have. Although it’s tempting to ignore the problem, that will only cause more difficulty. Here are some tips on how to handle this short-term emergency.
1. Make a list of every payment owed, when it is due, how much is owed and any interest rate and any late fee charges.
Before you know it, you will venture out to your mailbox, only to find bills from various companies all expecting you to send them money. It’s not quite as exciting as when Grandma sends you $5 for your birthday! When you’re out on your own, especially if you’re living in an apartment or a house, you will be amazed at the number of bills that come your way. Bills for Internet service, cell phone, home phone, car insurance, electricity, water, trash, cable, magazine subscriptions, car payments, school loans, and credit cards are just a few of the bills that will come to visit you. Oh, and of course, you have rent!
Paying your bills isn’t rocket science, but you have to be disciplined with both your time and your money. There is a delicate tightrope you must walk, balancing the bills you owe and the money you have. Add in the obstacle that you only get paid at certain times of the month (weekly, biweekly, bimonthly) but your bills will be due on different dates during the month, which can create some cash flow issues. Paying bills requires creating and sticking to a budget, so that when a bill is due, you have the money available to pay it.
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Getting control over your spending isn’t just a challenge for teenagers. It’s a challenge for adults too.
But why is it so difficult?
Because for most of us, we like stuff. We like material things like clothes, gadgets, and gizmos. But we also like non-material things like eating out, going to the movies, and spending money while just goofing off with friends.
In case you’re just joining us, be sure to go back and read why you need to balance your checkbook (Part 1) and what you need in place in order to make that happen (Part 2).
Today, we’ll wrap up with the actual practical steps to balance your checkbook. Although you may use an actual checkbook, software, spreadsheet or just paper and pen, the process will essentially be the same with each method. Here are your steps…
Yesterday, we addressed the “why” behind balancing a checkbook. But before you can actually balance it, you must have a few other things in place…
You may have heard that you’re supposed to balance a checkbook but have zero clue what that means. Although it may sound like you’re supposed to act like a circus animal balancing a ball on your nose, balancing a checkbook is a little different deal.
Balancing your checkbook means that you look at what the bank shows as cleared transactions compared to your own records and make sure it all matches up. Why should you do this? A few reasons…
The envelope system is a process in which you pay for as much stuff as possible in cash. Here’s how it works. The first thing you do is determine the common expenses that you can pay for in cash. These are categories such as groceries, gas, entertainment, clothing, eating-out, etc. Once you have set up your budget, and you know what the amounts are for each of these categories, go through and withdraw the budgeted amount in cash from your checking account and stick each amount in its own envelope. This is a way to force yourself to budget. When you need to buy groceries, you take money from the grocery envelope and spend only that. Any change left over goes back into the grocery envelope. If you only have $20 left in grocery envelope, and it’s only the seventh of the month, you’re going to be eating a lot of Ramen noodles!
Ahh, the dreaded “B” word? Not that “B” word you filthy animal. Get your head out of the gutter!
Here’s the bottom line: a budget is a necessary evil if you are going to win with money. But for most of us, we think we can live without that budget. We assume we won’t stick to it, so what’s the point of making one in the first place? We assume it never works the way we wrote it out. We figure that if we’re not good with numbers or that we have to use our fingers and toes for counting, we’ll be a disaster at putting together a budget. But creating a budget and sticking to it can be done and done well. Here are a few principles for making a budget: