constructing a personal budget. Regardless of the tool used, a budget’s accuracy is only as good as the accuracy of the individual updating budget data; an old budget that does not reflect actual income or expenses is of little use to a current budget. Computer generated budgets have come into common use since they replace the need to rewrite and recalculate the budget every time there is a change.
and performs calculations easily used to allocate the next month’s with rudimentary formulas. For expenses. Although every person’s example, budget spreadsheets are budget is different, the chart below, used to keep track of income and expenses. The major reason most people discontinue using budget spreadsheets that don’t offer dateCATEGORY shifting is that the information needs to be reentered or moved at the end Housing of each month. Spreadsheets are Transportation still excellent for complex budgets and planning. Food
Pencil and Paper.
Money-management Software.
A simple budget can be written on a piece of a paper prepared with a pencil, and optionally, a calculator. Such budgets can be organized in three-ring binders or a file cabinet. Simpler still is the pre-formatted household budgeting or bookkeeping forms that creates a budget by filling in the blanks. Useful budget forms may be found at these web sites:
Some software is written specifically for money management. Products such as Quicken and Microsoft Money are designed to keep track of individual account information, such as checking, savings or moneymarket accounts. These programs can categorize past expenses and display monthly reports that are useful for budgeting future months.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ templates/TC062062791033.aspx
Budget Allocation Guidelines
There are several guidelines to use when allocating money for a http://financialplan.about.com/cs/ budget. Past spending is one of the most important bases for budget budgeting/l/blbudget.htm allocation. A critical step in most Spreadsheet Software. personal budgeting strategies Spreadsheet software, like involves keeping track of actual Microsoft Excel, iWork Numbers expenditures during the month so or OpenOffice.org Calc, helps to that spending for the month can be arrange budgets according to need reconciled with that budgeted and
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from personalbudgeting.com, offers a guideline you can follow to help develop your personal budget.
Personal insurance and pensions Personal taxe Entertainment Apparel products and services Health care Miscellaneous expenses Education Personal care products and services Cash Contributions Reading Savings TOTAL
28.3 23.9 10.8 9.1 5.75 4.5 4.3 3.9 3.0 2.1 1.0 .6 .5 2.3 100.0
Hopefully, the above information will enable you to better manage your personal finances and achieve the blessing of financial independence.
w w w. g o s p e l - p a g e s . c o m
The author, Lloyd C. Folks, practiced as a CPA from March 1973 to September 2003. He is currently a management consultant to public and private companies. The material for this article was extracted from Wikipedia, the Free