Budgeting is a key component of expense management. It helps you track all your expenses, allocates your money, and helps you maintain positive cash flow. This is an essential process to help you stay out of debt and have enough left over at the end of the day to start building wealth. Additionally, check out these related sections: smart spending, taxes, and insurance and risk management.
Budgeting is a subsection of expense management.
Following up on my how to create a budget article, I want to share with you a budgeting method called the cash envelope budgeting system. The envelope system of budgeting has been around for long time (it’s believed to have started during the Great Depression). However, it became more popular when Dave Ramsey preached it … Read more
I believe that cash flow is one of the most powerful concepts in personal finance. People have a general feel about their personal finance — e.g., whether they are comfortable or are struggling. Unfortunately, not too many people truly understand cash flow and how important it is to your finances. When you understand the concept … Read more
A budget is a plan to help you balance your income against your expenses. At the minimum, your goal to try to break even each month so you can stay out of debt. However, a good budget should let you to save some money each month so that you can start building your wealth. Creating … Read more
Technology has provided us with a number of ways to stay on top of what’s happening in our lives. This, of course, includes our finances. There are a number of online financial management applications that can provide you with the means to track your spending, monitor your investments, and work toward reaching your goals. There … Read more
Have you ever been caught off guard by an annual expense that you had forgotten would need to be paid this month? Maybe you pay your life insurance with one payment every year or your dog needs to get shots every 6 months. An unexpected annual bill that pops up in a tight financial month … Read more
Can you afford the basics? What are the basics, anyway? According to a USA Today article, it takes about $150,000 a year to cover the basics, set aside money in savings, and enjoy a few extras. If you make less than $150,000 a year, the implication is that you are going to be just scraping … Read more
There are many families these days living on tight budgets and in many cases, even the income they are earning each week is still not enough to make ends meet let alone do much of anything else. Living on a limited budget is not impossible but it does involve sacrifice and creativity. How to Make … Read more
One of the mantras that we hear a lot in the world of personal finances is “budget, budget, budget.” But is this type of mentality really the best way to build wealth? More and more, some in the personal finance realm are starting to switch to a net worth mentality in order to better define … Read more
When it comes to budgeting, there are two main camps on this matter — either you swear by it, or you believe budgeting doesn’t work. For example, Nickel coined the term reverse budgeting and pretty much said he saves as aggressively as he could and let the chips fall where they may. On the other … Read more