BUDGETING FOR BEGINNERS
Why I Started Budgeting and You Should Too
if you want to increase your savings then the only way is to track your expenses
Money is difficult to earn but easy to spend.
I started traveling during monsoon season. Rainy days are my favorite season of all.
Why?
I started Hazel Paradise’s journey during this time.
I started my Coding journey during the rainy season.
I went on my first solo trip during the rainy season
And I earned my first online income during this time ($12 doing Ghostwriting).
So you can say a lot happened during this time.
But I guess this rainy season there will be no traveling for me. For the last five months, I have been spending a lot of money on traveling, shopping, etc. I won’t go into the list as there are lots of things I have spent money on.
Keep Track Of Your Expenses
I belonged to a business family. Every one of my family members is into business. Some are into Stocks, some have their own health clubs and some are real estate investors. My father was a businessman as well, much like his father. My mom’s family is also entirely into business, except for his younger brother who is Data Engineer in London.
My mom, her father, my father, his father. Everyone always telling me to keep track of my expenses.
“Whatever you earn, whenever you spend, keep track of everything.”
And I thought I don’t need it because I buy things only when I need them. But my bill statements says me something else.
So I have decided to start tracking my money.
We all get ignorant about our hard-earned money sometimes. Budgeting is the only solution.
How to budget money
Since I am completely new to this so I went on to search for how can I do some smart budgeting and save as much as possible. So this is what you can do -
- First calculate all your monthly incomes like your paychecks, side hustles, and so on. Then pick a budgeting method. I have given one below. I have an Income and Expense Tracker which I use myself. In case you are looking for one then here is the link to the Google Sheet Template.
- I will be using a simple 50/30/20 method. Many think this is new but actually, people have been using this for ages.
- In the 50/30/20 method, you allow 50% of your entire income for the thing you needs like groceries, utilities, housing, phone bills, transportation, insurance, child care, etc.
- This left you with 50%. From that take 30% and use this for your wants.
- And the remaining 20% of your income should go to savings and debts payment.
Conclusion
I have started using the tracker since the start of this month. At the end of the month, I’ll get to know where my money is actually going.
Hope that this will encourage you to start tracking your income and save your money as much as possible.