Control Your Finances - Budget Step #1

Budgeting to me is more than a piece of paper that tells me how much money I should have if I follow it. Because we all know that a budget is nearly impossible to follow to a "T". We overspend in one category and underspend in another...make more or less money than expected. When I began budgeting many years ago, I had a budget spreadsheet and separately, I had Quicken. Things have evolved, and today, I designed my budget to be both a record of Estimates and a record of Actuals. Sort of a mix of both budget and Quicken. It is the one key tool among several record keeping tools that I use, that I can look at (at any given moment) and see in one place, the answer to the burning question that I always get asked, "How much money do we have left?".

Through a series of posts, I want to go through what I do during the month for my budgeting. I hope it opens your eyes to new ideas or give affirmation that what you are already doing is sane. What I do helps me keep a grip on how much money we have in the bank at the beginning and will have at the end a pay cycle...even before the pay cycle is over.

My flow of budgeting goes like this:
Budget Setup (Estimates)
Bank -> Quicken
Quicken -> Budget Update (Actuals)

First and foremost, you need to have a budget setup. One that is made up of realistic spending behaviors. Without it you will be in a constant struggle to keep up. Believe me, I know :)
In the next post, I will demonstrate how I setup a "master template" budget and how I use it as the starting block for each and every month.