Learning to Budget Your Money
Sometimes a word like budgeting makes people cringe, but it can be an easy process if you have the right tools and resources. So, what is budgeting? “Budgeting is the process of creating a plan to spend your money. This spending plan is called a budget. Creating this spending plan allows you to determine in advance whether you will have enough money to do the things you need to do or would like to do,” (My Money Coach, 2020). Sometimes you just don’t have enough budget to do everything you love, so you have to create a planning process to prioritize your spending and focus on your money on the items you find important.
So why is budgeting so important? It’s all about making a plan to make sure that you have money for the things you do need. Following this plan helps you stay out of debt and for those in debt, it may help them get out of it. Budgeting is about balancing your income with your expenses. For some, they spend more than they make and that frankly can be dangerous and lead to massive debt. Debt is a huge problem in our country now even with the Covid-19 pandemic.
What can be helpful to create a budget and keep things on track? With the invention of technology, there are many applications that help create a budget based on your account and tracks your expenses. “Personal-finance programs or websites like Quicken and Mint.com offer built-in budgeting tools that can create your budget for you. Every time you make a deposit, write a check, pay a credit card bill or dispatch an electronic payment, you can assign it to a particular category, like “salary,” “clothing,” “groceries,” “child care” or “health insurance.” Some programs will allow you to download your payments and deposits directly from the bank, rather than having to enter them by hand,” (CNN).
I have use Mint and Quicken type apps that are on the go and are helpful, but there are many other online websites such as Pigly. Pigly is a website that has budgeting tools and calculators. They are easy to use and help users understand how to save, budget, and more! I love their website because it’s diverse and easy to use. I wish apps actually made it this easy and best of all it’s free to use and there are no fees to pay that apps sometimes make you pay to download data from your own bank account. With tools like these, budgeting and clearing down debt don’t have to be stressful; they can be easy to get through without the mess of remembering to do them! Get ready to be happy and stress-free with a great resource that doesn’t cost you anything to use.