Balancing Your Personal Budget

A balanced personal budget simply means that you have more income than you do expenses. Despite this simple definition, having a balanced budget has numerous advantages. Here are a few of those advantages along with tips on balancing your own personal budget. Advantages of Balancing Your Personal Budget Your personal budget is far more than just a bunch of numbers you write down on a piece of paper. Having a budget gives you the chance to monitor and take control over your finances. Keeping a balanced budget allows you to meet your financial obligations without any confusion, late fees or bounced checks. You also won't have to rely on credit cards or loans to pay your bills every month or to stretch your dollars between paychecks. Balancing your budget on a regular basis means that you'll be far more likely to catch financial errors, such as incorrect bank fees or double charges on your credit card. Catching these errors gives you the chance to correct those mistakes and get your money back. Keeping a balanced monthly budget also gives you the opportunity to analyze your spending habits and identify those that you need to change. A balanced budget can even highlight those areas where you might be able to save a little bit of money. All of those advantages lead up to one huge benefit: You will have less debt. And people with little or no debt tend to have little or no stress as well. How To Balance Having a balanced personal budget means aligning your spending habits with your income to make sure that your expenses don't outweigh your earnings. There's a wide range of software on the market that can help you with this task, but all that you really need is a pencil, a notebook and a standard calculator. Gather those tools along with your recent credit card statements, purchase receipts, car finance bills, bank statements and other monthly bills. Now sit yourself down and make a note of note every single monthly expense. Once you're done listing all of your expenditures, make columns on a piece of paper in your notebook. The headings of these columns should represent your different spending categories, such as mortgage payment, groceries, car payment, gas, insurance and so forth. Combine your minor expenses into a miscellaneous column. You should now have a realistic idea of where you're spending your money. Identify which of your expenses are true needs and which ones are really luxuries. True needs include food, shelter, transportation, utilities and clothing. However, designer clothing and gourmet foods would be considered a luxury, as would going to the movies, receiving DVD rentals in the mail, gym memberships and dining out at restaurants. Keep in mind that your income should go toward taking care of your true needs first. Total up the monthly cost of those primary needs. Now it's time to identify all of your reliable sources of income. Income sources often include a salary, social security checks, unemployment or child support. You might also have interest income or stock dividends that you can count on every month. Add up the total of your reliable income sources. Take the total of the monthly cost of your true needs and deduct that number from your total monthly income. If the resulting figure is negative, then you'll need to evaluate and change your spending habits. Perhaps it's time to kick some of those small luxuries out of your budget? If the resulting figure is positive, then you've got yourself a balanced budget. Congratulations! Instead of spending your extra cash, consider putting that discretionary income into a savings account, your retirement fund, your child's college account or investments. You could also use it to pay off your credit card balances and loan debts, which will eventually lower your monthly bills and provide you with even more discretionary income in the future.