Budgeting 101: A Blog Post About How to Create a Budget and Stick to it

Budgets are essential. Let’s assume you have a fixed take-home salary a month. Using the amount at your disposal how can you ensure you cover your cost of housing, health care, food, insurance, debt repayment, and leisure, without running out of money. This is a lot to cover for such a limited amount, and the game is a zero-sum one. This is why it’s recommended to create a budget that you can stick with. To put it simply, a budget is a plan for every rupee you earn. Although it cannot solve your money problems, it can offer more financial freedom with less stress.

Budgeting Strategies For Beginners

Budgeting for beginners is not as difficult as it seems. In fact, budgeting is an easy-to-practice strategy that creates a lot more order for your finances. Here is how you can create a budget for yourself.

1. Figure out your post taxation income

If you receive a regular paycheck each month, you may have some automatic expenditures to incur. These include your savings deposit, health and life insurance, pension plan, and more. Make sure to add those back in to give yourself a true picture of your savings and expenditures. If you have any other types of income from other sources like a small business or hobbies, subtract anything that reduces its overall earnings such as business expenditures and taxes. These deductions will help you create a true image of your earnings at the end of each month. To calculate your income post taxation, you can find a slew of budget calculators online.

2. Find the budgeting plan for you

Any budget of yours should cover all of your needs, including some of your desires. This is key when it comes to saving for emergencies as well as your future. A budgeting plan includes the envelope system or the zero-based budget system. These plans differ based on how much of the budget is allocated to different sources, so ensure you carefully browse the different ways there are to budget to find the plan that suits you best. Feel free to customize the framework of any budget so that you can make the most of your own savings.

One of the popular budgeting strategies for those new to it is the 50/30/20 budget. In this plan, you spend about 50% of your post-tax dollars on obligations, no greater than 30% on things that you want, and at least 20% on your savings and debt repayment. The simplicity of this plan is what makes it easy to follow. Over time, anyone who follows these budgeting guidelines can have the room to occasionally indulge, manage their debt, grow their savings so as to pay any unexpected expenses and retire comfortably.

3. Track your process

This is a crucial step when it comes to living with a budget that many do not make use of. Tracking your budget is just as important as creating one. It shows you how disciplined you have been, where there is room to grow, and whether your budget needs to be adjusted for being too lax or too strained. One can easily track their budget by creating a spreadsheet of their monthly expenses and logging how much they spent on those items that month. There are multiple free templates for budget spreadsheets available online. Tracking whether or not your budget is working for you is vital as it also shows you much financial discipline you have.

4. Make tweaks to your budget

Over time, tracking your budget will show you where you need to improve and where it needs tweaking. If your budget doesn’t reflect your finances as accurately as possible, you may not be maximizing the financial freedom you can gain from it. Your income will change over time. Additionally, you will find that you have different needs due to lifestyle changes. These changes should reflect in your budget. Ensure you adjust your budget to accommodate your new needs.

When it comes to budgeting for beginners, the first budget you create might not be the perfect one for you. You may find that you completely left out certain expenses, underestimated how much you spent under one expense category, didn’t account for variable income streams, and more. Your budget plan is likely to undergo many rewrites before it is ready to go. So, be sure to be open to making changes wherever necessary.

5. Be Consistent

The only way you will get your budget to work for you is to make sure you are consistent with it. By automating some of your expenses you can ensure that no matter what your income, these expenses will be covered. Expenses like a savings deposit, loan repayment, and even your monthly rent and electric bill can be automated, which means you will stick to the budget you create around these expenses. Additionally, having enough wiggle room within the budget you have created for yourself will prevent you from feeling like you are in a financial straitjacket. Ensure you have space in your budget to indulge in items you desire, rather than focusing only on essentials. The latter kind is an unrealistic budget and will not be almost impossible to practice.

The Bottom Line

How to segregate your budget and how consistent you are with it is going to make all the difference when it comes to your financial freedom. Essential portfolio items to budget for include a savings deposit, insurance plan, emergency fund, debt repayment, and a retirement fund, among others. Even though a lot of expenses are predicted, there is always the off chance that a financial emergency may occur. Having requisite savings through a proper budget can make the world’s difference in that time.