Managing Money Organizing Your Finances Is Key
Managing money means a lot more than going to work and paying your bills on time. It also means keeping track of investments or retirement accounts like IRA's and such. also, keeping track of receipts for tax purposes at the end of the year.
The first thing to do is gather up all of your bills, including any outstanding debt you may have on your credit cards. Organize this pile and put it where you can see it all at one glance. Write it all down if you have to. Make columns for everything including the name and address of the creditor. Do not forget to include gas for your car and groceries and even a small amount for entertainment purposes.
Managing money is all about creating a budget that you can stick to and then sticking to it. Religiously! Financial freedom is important and this is the way you will find it. Do not let anything stand in your way. Being debt-free in this economy is a rare find. Be a part of the minority and get debt-free now.
Next, figure out what your paychecks will be every week or however often you get paid. If you work the same number of hours every week then this will be easy and you will not have to spend a whole lot of time on it.
When this is done then take the list of bills and match each one up to a corresponding week in the month. Do this by sorting them out by due dates. If you need to break up a payment and save throughout the month for say, your house payment, then make sure you save enough each week so that at the end of the month you can have enough for the house payment.
You may not be able to do this for all of your bills but for the bigger bills you have you should be able to work something out so they all get paid in full and on time.
If you need help, get yourself a good software program to help balance your budget. They are all over the place and you might even be able to find a free version. Of course, a free version may not have everything you need or there may be some other limitations because of the 'free' status just look it over carefully and see if it will give you everything you need in a budget creating software. If you are just starting out then maybe free is all you need.
Once you have your list compiled and sorted then you will need to input the information so it makes some sense. Take the first week and subtract everything that will need to come out of that paycheck, make sure you pay yourself, too. If everything works out and you still have some left over that is awesome. If you do not have enough to cover all your expenses then you need to make some hard decisions about managing money and make the changes you need to make so you can live within your means.
