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Why should I budget? |
Budgeting - First Steps |
Budgeting - The Nitty Gritty |
Budgeting - Moving On |
Budgeting - Tips |
Tools of the trade |
Tools of the Trade | |
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Depending on how rigorous you want to be when running a budget dictates how much time and money you want to invest. It may be that you can manage your finances on the back of an envelope each month, or a simple budget planner similar to ours may give you a framework for your budget. Alternatively, a simple Excel spreadsheet will do the trick. If you really want to you can invest in various software packages to manage your personal finances that assist with budgeting. This is, of course, not for everyone, but I have found using such software useful for making sure I control my expenditure each month. I use Quicken's software to manage my current and savings accounts, as well as my credit cards and loans. Basically, if you are able to manage without such tools all well and good but if you need that extra help then they do make the job easier, and being able to print out graphs and reports from your PC can serve as a motivation for entering all that data. You can do a basic comparison of budget versus actual expenses by category, or you can enter more detailed information such as investments, assets, liabilities, etc., and print personal financial statements showing your net income and net worth. Most banks are now offer free on-line banking services making it easier to keep track. In some cases statements may be downloaded in a format for use with packages like Quicken. |
Example of the type of output provided by quicken.
Get Adobe Acrobat Reader to view our sample budget sheet.