Graduate Finance - Useful Links

Budgeting - Tips

Here are some general tips for making the most out of your income, managing your expenditure and budgeting in general.

EXPENDITURE

Make impulse buying difficult - remove temptation by leaving your cheque book and credit cards at home.
Transport costs can surprisingly eat into a budget. Whilst you often can't cut back on this at least take a look at how much you spend and highlight any possible savings. Set a budget for transportation, and if possible walk instead of taking a bus or taxi once in a while.
If you are paid company expenses make sure you claim these promptly, and keep all your receipts, even for small purchases - this money is better in your account than in your company's.
Budget for pleasurable items such as nights out.
Create an "expense" item in your budget to pay off credit-card balances and loans.
If you have outstanding credit card balances which incur interest pay off the highest-interest rate cards first.
Set aside money monthly for bills that are due quarterly or yearly. Examples might be car tax or insurance.
Get utilities or banks to change the due dates of bills to make your work easier.

SAVINGS

Every time you decide to forgo a purchase, put that money into your savings account. You don't bother buying that magazine that you won't read anyway, that's £3 saved. You walk instead driving, save the car parking fee. You pack your own lunch instead of buying that's another fiver.
Make savings an "expense" item which is deducted automatically from your monthly income.
After a loan is paid off, keep paying the loan amount to yourself (make a holiday or car fund).

GENERAL BUDGETING

Don't categorise your expenses into too many groups - to begin with use a few broad headings, then fine-tune your budget as you become more skilled.
Even if you don't want to budget formally just track your expenses for a few weeks. This will at least make you more aware of where your money is actually going.
Some people advocate the use of multiple bank account to help administer a plan. This can complicate matters unnecessarily but if you find it useful you can categorise your expenditure and open a different bank account for each of them. What is useful often is to have a reward account where you use the money to buy treats, or what might be considered luxury items. There may be other periodic expenses such as road tax that you may need to spend on. Identify and estimate these and transfer the appropriate amount into a separate account.

Get Adobe Acrobat Reader to view our sample budget sheet.