PERSONAL BUDGET

Personal budget

Personal budget

Introduction

We all have financial medium and long term goals: buying a house, change cars, eliminate debts, pay for the education of our children or the care of our elders, and take a dream vacation, save enough to live comfortably after retirement.

Unfortunately, not many people come every month to achieve their objectives because the money "are going" daily expenses. And they even have real difficulties in making ends meet. Surprisingly, also occurs in families that have good income.

Whatever our economic situation, the budget is essential to take control of our personal finance tool. Whatever their economic level, the budget will allow you to get more for your money. Perhaps you develop a budget sound like something complicated or unpleasant pictures may suggest, as deprived of things you want or even the necessary. Actually, it is quite the opposite. The budget is the most effective way to get the most of our money form. Its preparation and monitoring can even be fun. It requires a little effort at first, but later becomes a very beneficial habit that allows us to identify how we spend our income and make adjustments to save a little more each month, and achieve our long-term goals. The budget helps individual for: know where your money goes; prioritize spending; reduce or eliminate debts; set aside some amount every month to save, considering the long-term objectives; avoid discussions couples; accumulate an emergency fund; living within our means, with the reassurance that this entails; making predictions for the future; and keep track and control not deviate.

Discussion

Today, many people who work and expect it to hit the end of the month to collect his salary as the expenses are out of reality, so it is necessary to make a personal budget and not have such problems.

In this case there must be a record, which may be a notebook or a page in Excel. You should be aware that the budget is not rushed. You have to take a few minutes to think about what we're going to score. For that you will need to know that your family budget will have two large fields (income and expenses).

In that budget should record all money received from any source and how often it arrives, so you must specify in your registration form if it is fixed or variable income (Kremer, 2006, pp. 385-401).

The next step requires great care and discipline, if it will not be the end. As in the previous case, fixed costs must be identified and then the variables and extras.

Fixed expenses are house payments, utilities, education, among others. Within the variable expenses are food, toilet cleaning, useful and extra expenses spent on those holidays, outings to the cinema or theatre. From here, you can start calculating everything goes through your pocket and out of it.

Therefore, if the expenses are greater than revenue is warning sign, as if exceeded for several months, it is common to assume that debt to cover difference (Slasberg et ...