Title: Budgeting in Your 30s and 40s
1Budgeting in your 30s and 40s
- Presented By Profinance Blog
2Index
- Why budgeting in your 30s and 40s is Important?
- Do You Think Budgeting Is Hard?
- Know Where You Spend
- Know Your Goal
- Track Your Spending
- What And Which Are Fixed Expenses?
- What And Which Are Variable Expenses?
- How Can You Saving For Future?
- Budgeting in Your 30s and 40s is Worth the Effort
- Author Bio
3Why Budgeting In Your 30s and 40s Is So
Important???
- If you want to be able to live an enjoyable
lifestyle while accomplishing financial goals
like buying your dream home, saving for a
comfortable retirement, or paying for education
expenses, you need a budget
4Do You Think Budgeting Is Hard?
-
- No
- Budgeting doesnt have to be hard. ? You
simply need to know the three main parts of how
to set up and stick to a budget.
5 The Main Parts Of How To Set Up And Stick To A
Budget 1. Know Where You
Spend 2. Know Your Goals
3. Track your spending
6Know Where You Spend
- The first step in setting up a budget is to
know where to spend? - In order to know where you spend, you can
use an Account Aggregation Tool such as, - Mint.com
- Personal Capital
- You also review your spending by-
- collecting your bank account statements.
- credit card statements.
7 Reviewing spending habits can be a little
painful. Many people feel guilty about not
knowing what they are spending their hard earned
money on. Just know that this is a very important
step to get your spending in check. Being able to
see where your money has been going will allow
you to actually set realistic goals of where your
money should be going in the future.
8Know Your Goal
- The second step in setting up your budget is
to know your goals. For example, do you want to
be able to continue to take vacation? Are you
trying to pay off credit card debt or set up an
emergency savings fund? Do you want to save more
for a long-term goal such as retirement, or save
up for a new house or car? Knowing these goals
will allow you to be able to see the big picture
about how youd like to use your money. It will
help you actually stick to your budget.
9Track Your Spending
- The third step in budgeting is to be able to
track your spending. People sometimes dread this
step and have problems sticking to it. The
easiest way that I found to be able to stick to a
budget is to put your expenses into three
categories - - Fixed expenses
- Variable Expenses
- Saving for your future
10What And Which Are Fixed Expenses?
- These are things that you have already
committed to paying, such as a - Mortgage payment
- Rent
- Student loans
- Monthly bills
- Expenses that are relatively the same every
month.
11What And Which Are Variable Expenses?
- These are things like -
- Shopping
- Eating out
- Groceries
- Entertainment
- Anything else that you might or might not spend
money on each month.
12How Can You Saving For Future?
- Instead of trying to save whatever is left
over at the end of the month, having a goal for
this allows you to set up automated systems so
that you are paying yourself first.
13The best way to track is to look at your past
spending and then set a goal for your variable
spending that is within 10 to 20 of your past
spending. Set that variable spending target to
come out of a different checking account, go onto
its own credit card, or put it on a prepaid
spending debit card. This is essentially like
giving yourself a Safe to Spend allowance every
month. If you have money left over at the end of
the month, it rolls over to the next month.
14Giving yourself a Safe to Spend allowance
allows you to really focus on being intentional
on what you spend your money on from a
month-to-month basis. It also allows you to
quickly see if you are able to stick to your
variable expenses target amount. You can always
try it out for one to two months and see if you
need to adjust your goal number for variable
expenses. Once you feel comfortable with this
number, you can set up all of your savings to be
automatic and you will have your variable
expenses completely separated from the rest of
your money.
15Budgeting in Your 30s and 40s is Worth the
Effort
- Going through these three steps might take a
little bit of time and some effort, but it will
allow you to take control of your month-to-month
financial situation, and allow you to get on
track with reaching your financial goals much
more quickly.
16Authors BioTina Roth is a personal finance
writer and educator. In addition to being the
editor at her own Finance Blog, she is a
contributing writer to many other online finance
blogs. When she's not working on her budget
spreadsheet or looking for topics to write about,
you can find her playing with her kids or doing
her house decoration. To reach her and her
Personal Finance related Blogs you can visit here
http//profinanceblog.com.
17Thanks ?