Making a Budget and Sticking To It: Part 3

Here are some simple steps to the actual making of your budget.

Make Your Budget

After you keep track of your expenses and income for a few months, you're ready to create a budget. Your goals in making a budget are to:

• control your impulses to overspend, and
• start saving money.

To create your budget, follow these steps:

1. Determine the categories into which your expenses fall (see the chart below for suggested categories.) List your categories of expenses down the left side of a piece of paper (or Excel spreadsheet). Use as many sheets as you need to list all categories. These are your budget sheets.
2. On the sheets containing your list of categories, make 13 columns. Label the first one "projected" and the remaining 12 with the months of the year. Unless today is the first of the month, start with next month.
3. Using your total actual expenses for the two months you tracked and the other expenses you added, project your monthly expenses for the categories you've listed. (Make a note of when smaller expenses, such as magazine subscriptions, are due so you can adjust your budget for that month. These temporary adjustments make more sense than trying to save $1.23 each month to cover an annual magazine subscription.
4. Enter your projected monthly expenses into the "projected" column of your budget sheets.
5. Add up all projected monthly expenses and enter the total into a "Total Expenses" category at the bottom of the projected column.
6. Enter your projected monthly income below your total projected expenses.
7. Figure out the difference.

Coming in Part 4: Decreasing your expenses

To see other parts of this series:
Making a Budget and Sticking To It: Part 1
Making a Budget and Sticking To It: Part 2

Thankful Thursday:

This is my first Thankful Thursday and it is funny how God works in our lives...but I have been more aware of things to be that I am thankful for.

So here goes.

I am thankful that God in his mercy and grace saw fit to send his only son to die on the cross for my sins so that I may go to heaven and live with him forever.

I am thankful that I have a husband, home, family in a country that allows me to worship the God I love.

I am thankful that God never gives up on me, that he is patient and full of mercy and grace toward me.

I am thankful for this meme that has helped me to stop and think of how thankful I am for so many things.

I am thankful for the privilege of prayer and the gift of Gods words in the Bible.

I am thankful for answered prayers and I am thankful for answered prayers that the answer is no.

Free Lip Gloss for Me! And You TOO!

Free Protege Lip Gloss

Sign up for the Napoleon Perdis club here and you'll receive a coupon for a free Protege Lip Gloss--a $25 value.

Oh my, my lips could not handle using expensive lip gloss everyday..I'll have to save this one for special occassions!

Wordless Wednesday

This goes along with the Works for Me Wednesday post below:
Mark 16:15

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

Making a Budget and Sticking To It: Part 2

Do you need help figuring your total income? This may help.

Total Your Income

Your expenditures account for only half of the picture. You also need to add up your monthly income.

On a blank sheet of paper, list the jobs for which you receive a salary or wages. Then, list all self-employment for which you receive income, including farm income and sales commissions. Finally, list other sources of income, such as:

• bonus pay
• dividends and interest
• alimony or child support
• pension or retirement income, and
• public assistance.

Record net income. Next to each source of income, list the net (after deductions) amount you receive each pay period. If you don't receive the same amount each period, average the last 12.

Next to each net amount, enter the period covered by the payment -- such as weekly, twice monthly (24 times a year), every other week (26 times a year), monthly, quarterly, or annually.

Determine monthly income. Finally, multiply the net amount by the number of pay periods to determine the monthly amount. For example, if you are paid twice a month, multiply the net amount by two. If you are paid every other week, multiply the amount by 26 (for the annual amount) and divide by 12.

When you are done, total up all the amounts. This is your total average monthly income.

Coming up in part 3: Steps to making your budget