It’s Called Currency

Now that you’ve had plenty of time* to consider parts 1 through 4, let’s do a wrap-up of the basics for budgeting.

As the tagline of this site says, “manage the flow and you’ll be able to weather any storm.” Budgeting is the primary tool for managing the flow of money in your life. In Part 1, we saw where the money is flowing in (your income). In Part 2, we looked at where it was flowing away (your expenses).  Part 3 was the opportunity to create and /or examine any holding ponds (savings) and Part 4 was where you purposely diverted the flow in order to create growth elsewhere (giving). Know that money will flow through your life whether you’re managing it or not. However, taking the time to plan where the flow goes results in you holding onto more of it and having it be there where you need it.

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Tags: blogging, budgeting, cashflow management by Julie Ann Dunn
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Part 1 of this Budgeting Basics series was about your income, part 2 your expenses, and part 3 your savings. Now it’s time to look at what you’re giving.

You’re probably familiar with the saying, “You get what you give.” I prefer what Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich, said/wrote which is “You give before you get.” Think about that for a minute… if you want to receive something, you must first make a space for it by giving something. This principle is exactly why you need to make sure that giving has a place in your monthly budget. [Read more →]

Tags: budgeting, cashflow management, giving by Julie Ann Dunn
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In Part 1, you added up your income. Part 2 had you tally up your expenses. Now, before we look at the difference between those numbers, let’s talk about your savings.

Here in the United States, the amount of money Joe Citizen saves is non-existent. In recent years, the statistics have shown the nation’s savings rate at 2% on the high end and a negative 2% on the low end. In other words, our citizenry saves, on average, nothing. Are you an average Joe? [Read more →]

Tags: budgeting, cashflow management, priorities, saving, spending less by Julie Ann Dunn
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Now that you’ve tallied what you’ve got coming in, it’s time to look at what’s going out, but first, I want you to take out an index card or sticky note or just a small piece of paper. On it, I want you to write the total amount for what you think you spend each month. Set it aside for later. [Read more →]

Tags: budgeting, cashflow management, education, priorities by Julie Ann Dunn
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Welcome to the first of a series of entries on budgeting. This series will look at the components of a budget in order to help you keep that resolution you made about actually budgeting your money this year.

When most folks first decide that they need to budget, it’s usually because they’re living beyond their means or have not been saving anything for their future. They’re normally at some sort of crisis point, if not financially, then certainly emotionally. They have had all kinds of self-defeating negative talk running around in their heads for days or weeks or even months. They beat themselves up for frittering away their money as they look down the barrel of a milestone in their lives: decade birthday (30, 40, 50), new baby on the way, child entering high school, job change, etc. There’s no money (or at least not enough) for college, for retirement, or even for a long-overdue vacation. “How,” they ask, “did this happen?!” [Read more →]

Tags: budgeting, cashflow management, education by Julie Ann Dunn
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Many people have a habit of purchasing their Christmas gifts on their credit cards each year, acting as if they were suddenly surprised to find that Christmas came on the 25th of December…what, again?! Others frantically try to scrape together enough money to buy gifts by cutting corners in the months of October, November and December. Again, they seem to be surprised to find that there’s a major expense in the fourth quarter of the year. If you’re in one of these groups, here’s your clue: it’s time to start planning for next year. [Read more →]

Tags: budgeting, cashflow management, priorities by Julie Ann Dunn
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When I first started trying to figure out how to create a budget, I was lost. I didn’t know how much I spent each month on pretty much anything, nor did I have any idea how much I shouldspend. The whole idea of trying to figure that out intimidated me to the extreme. As a matter of fact, I had several false starts with my budget. I’d put one together at the beginning of the month, figure out that I wasn’t meeting it at the end of the month, and decide it was hopeless and convince myself that I really didn’t need a budget anyway. I think I did this several times over the course of a couple of years. At that time, money wasn’t tight and I could afford to be reckless. Or so I thought.

Had I taken the time to learn—really learn—how to effectively budget in those days, I might not have ended up more than $30,000 in debt when my first husband and I split up. [Read more →]

Tags: budgeting, cashflow management, education, priorities, saving by Julie Ann Dunn
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If you’re just starting out on learning how to manage your cashflow, here’s a technique that can work to curb overspending: use envelopes to allocate cash to certain categories. This is often useful when you tend to overspend on things like eating out, groceries, clothing and entertainment.

The technique: [Read more →]

Tags: cashflow management, saving by Julie Ann Dunn
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If you’re involved in any type of long-term committed relationship (married, living-together, whatever), you need to get current with each other about your money. Talk about your past mistakes and successes, your present situation, your future goals, and your individual money habits. Many people come from families that treated money as a taboo subject. If you came from one of them, it’s time to break that destructive family tradition. [Read more →]

Tags: cashflow management, education, priorities by Julie Ann Dunn
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As I was running through some headlines for online news articles yesterday, I was pleased to find some that related to topics I’ve talked about here in the past couple of weeks. For instance, on the subject of layaway, which was my November 2 topic,  Sears is reinstating its layaway program starting tomorrow. Of course, they’ve got restrictions so you can’t put a computer or refrigerator on layaway, but something’s better than nothing, right? Perhaps they’ll add options for those items if the program turns out to be popular.

I also discovered [Read more →]

Tags: budgeting, cashflow management, education, spending less by Julie Ann Dunn
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