No matter what your income is, a budget is the best way to manage your money. A budget is not just something you need to plan if you have debt to clear. It can be for travelling, buying furniture or because you want to do the amazing Styleyou Fashion Stylist eCourse and take control of your career! If you have never set yourself a budget before, here’s our top tips:
The first place to start when considering how to set a budget is to sit down and calculate your total of monthly income. This is the first step in writing up a sensible budget, and allows you to see your total monthly and annual earnings.
Add together all of the monthly expenses that occur on a monthly basis, no matter what is going on, such as your rent or mortgage, electricity, automatic payments, groceries or student loan repayments. Working out this figure will let you see what your total fixed expenses are that you must cover every month.
Set Financial GoalsYou need to determine what you want to save for. Having a goal and a figure of how much you need to save will push you in the right direction.
So now you can work out what you can cut back on! What do you buy regularly that you don’t need? Coffee a day? Do you buy your lunch every day? By sacrificing on things that you can do yourself or are unneeded, you will begin to save so much more money.
Take this example to motivate you in the rift direction: If you stop buying one coffee every week day for a year, you will save $1040!
To find out your cash flow, you need to work out the difference between money coming in and money going out. If your calculations come out with a positive number, then you are on the right path for saving. However, if it comes out negative, it means your income doesn’t cover your expenses. You will need to work out what else you can cut from you discretionary expenses to live within your means.
There is an app for everything these days! So why not start using one to help you save for your goals?
A lot of the banks in NZ have great apps that allow you to easily transfer money into a specified savings account.
Saving made simple is another great app that takes out all the hassle of budgeting.
So now you can start planning your next goal and take charge of your finances to make your dreams come true!
Let us know if you have any money saving tips in the comments below.
Until next week fashionistas xx
