Let’s face it, you need to make a budget and begin tightening the belt to save your money and spend it wisely. While this seems like an insurmountable task, it actually isn’t. Making a budget is nothing more than planning out your finances and setting financial goals for yourself.

If you can do this with chores, school, and projects at work, you can do it with your income too. 

Lay It All Out

First, you’ll need to take a look at your paychecks and determine how much money you have coming in. Next, you’ll need to go through all your bills, credit cards, and payments and determine how much money goes out.

Make a list, a spreadsheet, or do it in budgeting software. At this point, it doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you do it. Once you have all of these things determined, you’ll know how much money you have left over to budget for yourself, whether for fun or saving up for something special.

Budget All Your Money

One of the downfalls of people making budgets is that they make a plan for all their bills and payments and fail to budget the “free money” that is left over at the end of the day. The reality is if you truly want to scrimp, save, or spend wisely, you’ll need to budget that “free money” as well.

You need to budget groceries, clothing, pet supplies, coffee, or anything else you need to buy to sustain yourself. But truly successful budgets will go through every single red cent and put it to work. Never leave a single penny idle in your pocket, else you’ll spend it frivolously and seemingly have no money when you actually have plenty, you’re simply not making a wise budget.

Make a restaurant budget, a theater budget, you don’t have to deprive yourself, but do not overspend your budget on these things and practice self-control. This will work wonders for your bank account.

Budget for Savings

We’ve all heard of those “snowball” payments, that you pay off one credit card with minimum payments, then roll that same payment and add it to the next card and the next, until your payments have “snowballed” and in no time, you’re out of debt. That’s great! In fact, it’s a smart way for people to dig themselves out of that hole.

However, you should also determine to set aside a little something for savings, even if it’s only $5 or $10 every pay period. Over time, this will become your safety net if the car needs to go to the shop or one of the kids is sick.

If you ever have paper money in your pocket, determine to save all your $5’s in a jar. You’ll be surprised how quickly this money will add up.

Budgeting is Easy

Budgeting is easy, but it can be scary or overwhelming. However, the fear only comes from not knowing your financial landscape. Once you have that figured out, conquer your money and make it work for you!