hdYb: Sophomore Budget

Meet Justin Anderson, my brother. He works a full-time job and has limited bills, but is saving his money by living at home. He melts faces by beating on the skins and wearing scary shirts.

As before, he does not need to complicate things, but now, this is his hard earned money, not my parent's, so it seems more valuable. Before he plans ahead, he should look back for at least a month to see what he normally spends his money on. Otherwise, he'll "guess" way too low to make himself happy and simply have nice numbers on paper. I would suggest he look at his online banking (at listerhill.com) and everything that went through his account for the past month (plus any cash expenses not listed). He should then write out where his money has gone into separate categories and base his budget from those figures (I would at least use Excel for this one). Every penny he spent should be accounted for somewhere on his sheet.

Even though his hours will fluctuate, he should use his lowest check to determine his income. Don't forget he may get paid every two weeks, but his cell phone bill is due once a month. So to budget monthly, he should multiply a weekly check by 4.3 or a bi-weekly check by 2.15 or even multiply what he makes each typical day by 30.

Budgeting doesn't necessarily mean living cheap, or even saving money back, it just means that you know what you've got coming in and what's going out. So now that he knows his expenses and his income, for a month. He can begin a long-term plan of saving and watch his expenses, so they don't get out of control.

So, he shouldn't be too conservative when making his budget, he should just be real -plus a dollar. His first month's budget may not be the time for him to spend as little as possible, but instead, get ian idea of his spending habits. Then work on spending less and possibly saving. It's always keeping the budget that is the hardest part, especially if it's unreasonable.

How do you budget?

Chris