Budgeting is the first and most important step to managing your money. Many people balk at the idea of a budget because it can be time consuming. It does take time and work to establish a budget. It can cause contention between spouses. It often wakes people up to the reality of their situation, which can be bit scary. If you don’t actually track your expenses during the month, then having a budget is worthless because you are not applying all your planning to your situation. You can learn more about setting up a specific budget here.
By setting up and maintaining a budget you can actually eliminate most of the conflict and stress that is caused by money. Once you and your spouse agree on a budget, than you will have little contention over the money and where it is going. It can help you turn your financial situation around, and give your control of your future.
The major complaint of budgeting is that it is time consuming to track your spending everyday. It can be, but it doesn’t need to be. If you have a typical budget you will be using a ledger to track your expenses. This can be a spreadsheet set up in Excel, or it can be a piece of paper where you subtract money out of each category as you spend it. The easiest way to complete this is to have a specific time set aside each day or once a week where you enter in the amount you have spent in each category.
One system that works particularly well with this type of budget is the “Rich on Any Income” system. You have a ledger that you take with you, so that you track spending as you go. This takes a lot less time, since you enter everything in as you go.
If you are married you may want to assign specific categories to each spouse, so you don’t overspend by purchasing something on the same day. You will also want to set an amount in which you talk to the other spouse before you spend over that amount. This would be especially fitting in the miscellaneous category of your budget.