There are lot of sites these days that allow you to connect all your accounts. They will pull back your financial information and put it in on place.
Are you thinking that sounds too overwhelming? Then start simple.
You can use a spreadsheet. I used a template from Vertex42.com. The one I use is called the personal budget. It allows you to input your income and any expenses for each month during the year. It gives you insight into what will be in your account at the end of each month over the next 12 months.
Read on to see why we started using a budget.
A few years ago my wife wanted to go back to school. She was already working in a career and we had a mortgage and plenty of other expenses. It was a scary thought - to give up the money she was earning in order to start another career. In the end, it would make her more happy. We talked about it and the answer was simple - let's do it!
After we started looking into how to make it work; it was not so simple after all.....
We decided we would take out financial aid in order to make ends meet for each semester my wife was in school.
During that first semester we did not have a plan. We did not keep an close eye on how much we spent. By the end of the semester we were running short, we did not have enough money to pay our expenses. In the end we took out a small loan to make it through.
That's when we decided we needed help.I did not know where to start. So I read as much as I could about budgeting on the Internet. There are sites that offer help for a fee. There are sites that offer advice. The one thing that kept popping up was the need to write down your expenses.
It was scary at first, being honest with ourselves. We wrote down all our our expenses and it was mind blowing how much money we could spend in a month.
We still use our budget spreadsheet today. We've actually helped friends and family members create their own.
We've stopped living paycheck to paycheck and instead are paying off debit as well as creating a savings account.
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