How To Make A Budget

Importance Of Budgeting
Learning how to make a budget seems to have taken on less importance over the past several decades. It may be due to our affluence as a society, but people have forgotten the importance of budgeting. As economic circumstances worsen, more and more people are finding that they need a budget and don't know how to make a budget and don't understand the purpose of budgeting, nor do they have the financial literacy to understand to what it means to be wealthy or how to pursue that financial education.

Easy Process Requires Commitment
Creating a personal budget is a fairly straight forward and uncomplicated process. Most of the people I have talked with who are struggling financially are looking for a quick fix out of their financial situation and don't want to be bothered with the budgeting process. There is no quick fix. Making a budget, while not hard, does require diligence and perseverance.The real benefit, however, is that you will now be planning your spending with your eyes open and with self-control instead of being at the mercy of your circumstances.

Track Your Spending
The very first thing you will need to learn is how to track expenses as well as income. Tracking your expenses is important because you cannot make informed and intelligent spending decisions if you do not know where your money is going. This will need to become a lifelong habit but you will want to wait until you have 60-90 days worth of data before you move on to the next step.

Categorize Your Expenses
After tracking your spending for 60-90 days the next thing you will want to do is categorize your spending. The idea here is to make it complete but not overwhelming. Here is a suggested list to categorize your spending plan:

Income
Charitable Giving
Taxes
Housing
Food
Transportation
Insurance
Old Debt
Entertainment
Clothing
Savings
Medical
Miscellaneous
Investments
Child Care

Spend Less Than You Earn
It is a lot easier to see exactly how much and where your money is going after you have categorized your spending. When you take your income and subtract out your charitable giving and your taxes, what is left is called your net spendable income. Whatever that amount is, that is all you have left to live on. And that becomes a new rule for you when you make out your budget: You will not spend more than you bring in.

Be self-controlled!You have what you have at God's pleasure and not your own in order to accomplish God's purposes and not your own. When all is said and done, everything is about Jesus. That is kind of my paraphrase of Colossians 1:16. If you would like to get involved with a free online Bible study, check out free-online-bible-study.com for a free study of Colossians and more.