What should you do before beginning to design your budget?

Answer 1

Examine your available assets and compare them first to your essential spending and then to your desirable spending if you have any left over.

Answer 2

I have 'sort of' an answer for you; use the 50/30/20 plan!! this means, 50% of what you earn goes for the necessities; 30% for just yourself; fun spending, etc., and 20% for saving and investing....If I had had this info 40 years ago when I was starting out, I'd be a lot better off!! as for necessities; if you lost your job tomorrow,what would you be spending money on? THOSE are the necessities; if you are more ambitious as far as saving/investing, then you could put aside 20% for the fun spending, and 30% for saving/investing; that is, after all , a personal thing...but trust me, you CANNOT go wrong with this method..........other than that, I;d say stay out of debt as much as you can, esp.credit card debt! (been there,too!! but no more!!) and live BENEATH, not above, your means...if you follow this plan you will always have money for the fun stuff; it won't feel like (that nasty word!!) "budget" but a living, breathing, spending plan!! It will give you peace of mind as far as money matters are concerned, and you will always have money for what you want and for your investments...I hope you give this a try and let me know what you think................email me if you want........have fun!!!!!!!!11

Answer 3

1st figure out what are necessary and constant costs for you that never change. For example, rent, phone, credit card bills.
Then total in all the other extra expenses like haircut, gas, groceries. I always add a bit more to average it out.
Once you have that total it up and that is your rough monthly expense. From there you can see where you spend other money and cut back accordingly. For me it works well to keep the listed expenses right in my check book and I always put a little away for savings as if it was a bill each month. Hope this helps!

Answer 4

Really the first thing you need to do is look at your current spending. Ideally you want to go through everything that you spent last month and group them into categories. This will give you the information that you will need to properly set up your budget.