Preparing a budget is an important part of any business and usually this responsibility is placed on the most reliable financial wizards of the organization.Thus, the abilities and character of these stalwarts must have been above board if you expect the best results.However, financial budgets are also great for families to have and can help them better manage their money. Its basic requirement is providing information on how to manage your income and expenses within a particular amount and time.
There are lots of tools online for budgeting, but the best tool you could use is Excel. It has been around for decades, many people use it and can perform any function you need it to when it comes to budgeting.
By looking at your personal budget you will get useful information on your spending. It includes your routine expenses as well as one off payments you have to do in that particular period. Sometimes you have to face shortfall in your financial budget. In order to cover such discrepancy you may decide to cut your expenses first of all and if it does not fulfill your needs, you can try borrowing the necessary funds.
Budgeting for the Future
Another great reason to use budgeting spreadsheets is to forecast future spending. If you have a good idea of what kind of income or money you will be getting, then you can budget out several months (or even a year) in advance. This can help you prepare and save the money you forecast that you will need. It will also help you see if you can take on any new expenses that you currently don’t pay for.
Get Prepared for Vacation
Family vacations are awesome! We all want to get a way from our daily routine and go have some fun from time to time. One problem that many families face is finances. How are they going to afford a trip to Disneyland? For those with high levels of income, this is not a problem. For the rest of us, we need to budget and save for this.
By having a family financial budget, you can better see where your money needs to go (pay bills and expenses), which should allow you to understand how much you can save each month towards your family vacation. This way, you can forecast how long it will take you to save the necessary funds needed.
Keeps You Focused
Budgeting does take time but the benefits can have you making very smart decisions with your money. When my family began budgeting, we found that we took better care of our money. We did less emotionally-driven (lazy) spending. We saw where our money was going and we could clearly see where changes needed to be made.
With Excel, we itemized all our spending using our checking account statements and grouped them into categories. From there we could see how much was going to each category and we could create goals for future months.
Excel may seem like a daunting piece of software to someone who has never used it. Don’t fret. Once you begin to understand how it is used and how you can easily use simple formulas, you can absolutely take advantage of what Excel has to offer. There are tons of websites and YouTube videos that can help you learn Excel. You might also be surprised to find many Excel consultants at very reasonable costs that perform online training. The resources are out there, you just need to take the time to learn.