Begin 2011 with a Personal Budget

A personal budget is absolutely critical for anyone that is committed to taking control of their personal finances.  Why? Because a budget provides us the input we need to manage our income, track our expenses, improve our cash flow to payoff debt and start a savings plan.  A personal budget provides us a tool to work on achieving our financial goals.   It is the first step in taking control of our personal finances.

Therefore, the start of a new year is the perfect time to commit to creating and using a personal budget.   This does not have to be an overwhelming task.  There are countless free personal budget resources and free personal budget software resources online to help you get started.  Don’t get caught up in selecting the perfect budget format.  It is not that important.  What is important is capturing all of your income and expenses.  Pick something that is simple to use.  We use a simple budget worksheet in Excel. Here is a link to a Microsoft personal budget template that has over 3.4 million downloads.  http://bit.ly/gatAnx

It is also very important when creating a personal budget to capture all of your miscellaneous expenses that occur throughout the month.  The only way to accurately capture all of these expenses is to save every receipt for every dollar you spent for a minimum of 30 days.  This information  is essential to preparing an accurate monthly budget.  It will also provide you some great insights into where all of your money goes on a monthly basis.

Once you have completed an accurate monthly budget and have captured all of your expenses you can start looking for creative ways to reduce or eliminate unnecessary expenses and save money.  The monthly savings you create can be used to start paying off consumer debt and funding your savings goals.   

A personal budget is the first step in taking control of our personal finances, controlling our spending and achieving our financial goals for our lives.    Start today and change your life and finances forever.  

 I hope you have benefited from this post on Financial Literacy.  If so, leave a comment.  In addition, please forward this to anyone you think might benefit from this short financial literacy lesson. 

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