How can I get a hold of my expenses, bills etc.? I haven't been responsible for paying the household bills in

Question

YEARS! I don't know how anymore. How can I create a budget and stick to it? How do I balance a checkbook (correctly)? Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm going to list a couple of websites that offer exactly this information. There are several systems people use, and each website offers different types of advice.
I'd advise you to look into Dave Ramsey's site and books. As someone who gives financial advice as part of my job, I like what he has to say and the plans that he offers. No, I don't work for him at all, I just know that he gives excellent, doable advice.
Several years ago I was in your position. My husband left me without warning, and I was STUCK. I made the mistake of ignoring things and letting them go, and am still trying to fix some of that. Please get yourself on a plan and work that plan until you're comfortable. Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Answer 2

BILLS: Easy. As your bills come in, collect them. Make sure you pay all bills due by the 15th of the month on the 1st of the month. Pay all bills due by the 30th of the month by the 15th of the month.

BUDGET: The total amount of the cost of all bills and an amount to be placed in savings is your monthly budget. Pay these bills/save first. After bills are paid on this bi-monthly basis, and there is money in savings, live off of what is left for the two weeks. Do the same for the second two weeks. Do not go over.

Use cash if you shop.

Never create undo credit debt that you can not pay it will destroy your budget. If you can pay it then add it to one of your bi-monthly payments periods, as it is due.

CHECKBOOK: place the amount in your checking account at the top of your check book balance sheet. With every purchase and every check written, subtract it from the account balance. DONT WAIT....YOU MAY FORGET. Always keep track of how much money is left once you make a purchase or write a check, because although it may take the checks a while to clear that money is accounted for and gone! don't go over your ending balance. Try to stop spending when you get to $100.00 as an overdraft measure just in case you forgot to write something down. Be sure to account for ATM fees.

Answer 3

The good news is, you can seize as much control of the budgeting & expense process as you want. It sounds like you accept that responsibility, and just need some guidance in setting up a plan and putting it into action.

Let's start with expenses. Grab those printed statements from your recurring liabilities - credit card companies, bank/student loans - that you're paying with after-tax funds. Go back a few months if you have 'em handy. Using a spreadsheet, start broadly categorizing your monthly expenses into necessities and luxuries (you can drill down on this later, after your basic plan is established). Once you see where your paychecks & savings are spent, you can craft a budget for those funds going forward. You should particularly look for areas of change (pay down a credit card faster, save more for retirement, cut back on luxuries) that will result in you retaining more of your hard-earned cash.

Budgets can get as complex as you like; just remember that the correctness of the inputs will determine the value of the output. Very few people actually track expenses, so set yourself apart from the others and do a better job if you want above-average results.

As for paying those expenses, monthly bills have one absolutely beautiful feature: they're due on the same time each month. There's no uncertainty as to when your utilities, mortgage or credit card payments are due. Lay these dates out in your calendar, and match those dates up with the budgeted payments you created earlier. There are some payments that are strictly inflexible, because they're simply bills. But a credit card is a revolving loan, so as much as I'd caution you against borrowing more, you can flex on that payment if cash is truly tight. Of course, a cash crunch may be indicative of living beyond your means. If you see problems coming up with debt payments, return to your budget and see where trouble lies.

Good luck and get started as soon as possible!

Answer 4

A realistic budget is your best weapon against overspending.

If you want to keep your spending under control, it's essential that you make a budget. A budget allows you to get a handle on the flow of your money -- how much is coming in and where it goes out. With that information in hand, you can make intelligent choices about how to spend.
Make a List of Your Expenses

The first step in making a realistic budget is figuring out where your money goes. To keep track, you should make an expense record. You may be tempted to turn to a computer program, such as Intuit's Quicken, to keep track of your expenses. That may seem like an easy way to approach the task, but most of these programs have a significant shortcoming -- they don't record your cash outlays. Computer programs have you analyze your expenses paid primarily by check or credit card, overlooking the most obvious source of payment -- cash.

Rather than relying on a computer program, you can keep track of your expenses in a low-tech but comprehensive way: with some paper and a pen. Here's how:

1. Take out eight sheets of paper. You will use one sheet per week, meaning you will record your expenses for two months. By doing this, you'll avoid creating a budget based on a week or a month of unusually high or low expenses.
2. Select a Sunday to begin recording your expenses.
3. Record that Sunday's date in the blank at the top of one sheet of paper.
4. Carry that sheet with you at all times.
5. Record every expense you pay for by cash or cash equivalent -- check, ATM or debit card, or automatic bank withdrawal. When you make a payment on a credit card bill, list the items paid for.
6. At the end of the week, put away the sheet and take out another. Go back to Step 3.
7. At the end of the eight weeks, list seasonal, annual, semi-annual, or quarterly expenses you incur but did not pay during your two-month recording period. The most common are property taxes, car registration and maintenance, magazine subscriptions, tax preparation fees, insurance payments, and seasonal expenses such as summer camp fees or holiday gifts.

Balancing a checkbook...
1. This will always be an important task, although the method of accomplishing it is changing in the electronic age.

2. Although your bank processes thousands of transactions accurately, it can make mistakes, and you typically have only 60 days in which to inform the bank of the error. If you don't balance your checkbook monthly, you might not even find the error in 60 days. Even more likely is the possibility that you made a math error in your checkbook register, which you're unlikely to find unless you balance your checkbook each month.

3. If you make a mistake or forget to post an ATM withdrawal, debit card purchase, or other transaction in your checkbook register, you may start bouncing checks and incurring fees, which are often $25 or more for each returned check. If you don't correct the problem quickly, you can often incur a number of returned check fees or more than one fee for the same check if the person the check was written to re-deposits it right away in the hopes that your balance will now cover the sum.

4. If there is a problem at some point, it's much more difficult to wade through months of transactions to figure it out. If you've balanced your checkbook every month, the most you'll ever have to do is look at the most recent month's transactions. Sometimes people make such a mess of their checkbook by not balancing regularly that they have to close out their account and open another one.

Unfortunately, the basic money management task of balancing our checkbooks is not taught in most schools and usually not taught by our parents. If you're just starting out on your own, or you have your first bank account, or you just never got in the habit of balancing your checkbook regularly, the next pages include simple, step-by-step instructions for doing it, and an easy-to-use checkbook balancing form.

Answer 5

First, you need to assess your expenses (Phone, cable, water, trash, rent, food), but other things as well (clothing, gas, insurance, credit cards)

Determine what your income is. Determine what your balance is at the bank.

You have $8000 in the bank and you bring home $1200 every two weeks.

YOu note your expenses in your book and have a running total of what goes out and what comes in.

The hardest part of all this is being able to project ahead to determine what you can and cannot do in any given month

Answer 6

I have a problem with that too (far too much to think about on an everyday basis) so I just hired a professional to do it. It's very convenient, and they also handle taxes and investing.

Answer 7

I recommend Quicken software....it does everything for you!

Answer 8

get a consultant to advice you.