Financial goals may not seem like a vital part of the budgeting process, but listing your budgeting goals will keep you motivated. This is what you want to achieve and when. You should now have a complete list of your income and expenses, which we’ll use to fill in the spreadsheet in the creating your budget section. These spending patterns and behaviours can be called ‘spending leaks’ - we’re going to change your mindset to look at these instead as ‘opportunities to save’. It will also help you identify spending patterns and behaviours that could be better managed to save money. Look to have all fixed expenses debited out of a single account for better tracking.įollowing these tips will help you document all of your expenses for your budget spreadsheet.Analyse how much physical cash you withdraw and spend – try to not use cash ongoing.Analyse your credit card statement for spending patterns by categories.Here are some tips to accurately gather your existing expenses to document in your budget: Instead of trying to track these mini variable expenses, you might be better off stating ‘I have $50 per week for variable expenses’ and work towards sticking to this number. For instance, some days you may buy a coffee – other days you may not. Variable expenses are slightly harder to track and may require you to set yourself a daily or weekly budget limit to help cover these.Fixed (or recurring) expenses are easily tracked, as they are often a set amount on a regular date.There are also two types of expenses: Fixed and Variable. Listing your expenses quickly helps you establish whether you have enough money coming in to cover these. Your new expenses total $1,725 per month.You add a buffer of 15% which is calculated at $225.You estimate you spend $1,500 per month.When calculating your expenses, also factor in unexpected bills, such as unplanned car repairs.Ī good rule of thumb is to add an extra 10 per cent to 15 per cent. A forgotten bill really throws a wrench into your savings plan. Remember that being thorough when you add up expenses is important in creating a realistic budget. Some expenses are intermittent, such as insurance payments, so to get the most accurate financial picture you can calculate an average for six months to a year. Assess your expenses by consulting your bank statements, receipts, and financial files. To permanently change one of your spending categories, you must edit your budget.This is how much money you spend. Reallocating funds between categories doesn’t permanently change your budget. Either way, you avoid dipping into savings to cover unexpected expenses and your budget evens out over the course of the year. For example, if you exceed the amount in the current month’s Automobile: Repair category by $100.00, you can reallocate $100.00 from next month’s Automobile: Repair category, or you can choose to reallocate $100.00 from the current month’s Clothing category. ) and need to cover unexpected budget shortfalls, you can reallocate funds between budget categories. You can break your expenses into categories and subcategories, set up and access multiple budgets, track irregular or one-time expenses, reallocate funds from one budget category to another, and set savings goals. If you are using an Advanced Budget (The Advanced Budget option in Money gives you more detail and long-term planning tools. To find out which budget you’re using, look for the Essential Budget, Advanced Budget, or Savings and Spending Budget label in the upper-right corner of the Budget summary page. The steps in this task depend on whether you’re using the Essential Budget, the Advanced Budget, or the Savings and Spending Budget.
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