The main goals of budgeting are to plan, coordinate, keep track of, and motivate people. But budgeting is also an important way to make decisions, keep track of how well a business is doing, and plan for future income and expenses. With a good budget, it can be easier to make the most of limited resources. But what does this mean for your personal finances? Learn more about how budgeting works and how it can change your financial health.
What Does a Budget Mean?
A budget is basically a plan. It looks at how much money you make every month and helps you figure out how much to spend and on what. Your budget also shows how much money you’ll need for things like bills, rent, and other expenses.
One of the first things you need to do when making a budget is to figure out how you spend your money. Some regular expenses, like rent or car payments, are easy to figure out, especially if you pay the same amount every month. Other costs may be harder to figure out because they change from month to month or from season to season.
Try to write down everything you spend money on for at least one month instead of guessing how much you spend on things like eating out and entertainment. Keeping your receipts and writing down what you bought at the end of the day can help you get a more accurate picture of where your money goes.
What’s the point of making a budget?
What’s the point of making a budget? If you’ve ever been short on cash when a bill was due, you know what I’m talking about. One of the most important reasons to make a budget is to make sure you always have enough money to meet your needs and reach your goals.
But that’s not all that budgeting can do for you. Here are the six main reasons why you should have a budget:
Setting goals: When you live from paycheck to paycheck, it can be hard to think about long-term goals like going on vacation or buying a new car. By making a budget, you can get a better picture of your finances and see where you can cut back and save a little money to reach your goal.
People often use their budgets to keep track of not only what expenses they have coming up, but also when they are due. You can save money on late fees by making sure you have enough money to pay your bills on time.
Planning for the Future: Once you have a better handle on your finances, you can also start planning for the long term. You could even save money in an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) or invest it for long-term returns.
Prepare for Emergencies: You should be able to pay for a financial emergency. Start by putting away enough money to cover your living costs for six months in a separate savings account. If you ever lose your job or get a big medical bill, you’ll be able to pay the bills until things get better.
Less stress: Making a budget might not sound like a lot of fun, but it’s better than losing sleep over upcoming bills you can’t pay.
Limiting bad habits: During the first few months of budgeting, many people learn a lot about the habits that have helped them and the ones that haven’t. By keeping a closer eye on your money, you’ll start to see the ways you spend that you want to change for the better and be able to do something about it.
How to wisely spend money
There are many ways to budget your money, and it’s important to find the one that works for you so you’ll stick with it in the long run. When you’re planning your budget, you’ll want to make sure you don’t forget to include things like entertainment.
The 50/30/20 rule is a tried-and-true method. It’s a simple guideline for making a budget:
50% of your income should go to needs and must-haves.
30% of what you want
20% for saving and investing
Even though this is a good place to start, it can be helpful to break each of the three categories above into smaller subcategories. For example, instead of just putting away half of your income for bills, you might want to divide it into categories like:
Rent
Phone bill
Groceries
Bill for electricity
Insurance
These smaller categories will help you stay realistic about how much money you plan to put into the “needs” category as a whole. Over time, you may decide that you want to change how much you put into certain budget categories. You might find that you aren’t saving enough money for things like investing and that you can make up the difference by spending less on things like eating out.
Making a Budget Planner: Budgeting and Making Predictions
Making a budget isn’t as helpful if you don’t change your habits and stick to it. There are a lot of helpful tools that can help you keep track of your personal budget, which is good news. To get started, check out the following:
Nerdwallet: Nerdwallet has a free worksheet that can help you start planning your budget.
Mint is one of the best free budgeting apps because it makes it easy to keep track of your budget and bills.
YNAB: “You Need a Budget,” which is what YNAB stands for, is a paid service that people swear by. It not only helps you stick to your budget, but it also shows you how to keep your finances in good shape for the long term.
Goodbudget: With Goodbudget, you’ll never be caught off guard again. It’s an app for your phone that uses the tried-and-true envelope method, but in a digital form.
What Does Business Budgeting Mean?
Budgeting is important for businesses just as much as it is for people. In the same way that a personal budget helps you keep track of your own money, a business budget helps managers (and small business owners) make sure that a company makes more money than it spends.
By making a financial plan, a business can make sure it spends its money as wisely as possible without hurting its profit. When a business owner makes a budget, he or she can plan for costs like selling goods, advertising, rent, and other costs. The company can then make a plan for how to pay for these costs. By making a business plan, a company can also set goals by figuring out how much profit it needs to make each month to stay on budget.
How to Budget for a Business
Just like there are different ways for people to make a budget, there are also different ways for businesses to do the same thing. Using a method called “participative budgeting,” some businesses even let their employees take part in making the budget.
Some other popular ways for businesses to make budgets are:
Incremental budgeting is the process of making changes to a company’s current budget to reflect changes in the company’s earnings, such as growth or a drop.
Value-Proposition Budgeting: Figuring out how much money each budget category gets based on how much value it brings to the business as a whole.
Activity-based budgeting is when a company sets a goal and then pays for the kinds of activities that will help them reach that goal.
Zero-based budgeting is the process of justifying every dollar spent so that at the end of each period there is no more money or debt.
Cash Flow Budgeting is the process of finding extra ways for a business to make money when its budget is having trouble staying on track.
Surplus budgeting is the process of figuring out what a company can do with extra money when it earns more than expected.