BudgetMama

It’s that time of year when we look at our bank statements and declare “This year will be different, I will commit to a weekly budget planner in the New Year and start changing my spending habits!” Unfortunately whilst many of us make new years resolutions, most of us have broken them by the end of February, but if taking better control of your finances in 2010 really is a resolution you would like to keep, then one evening in January (or any time of the year for that matter) is all it takes to really grab that budget by the horns so that maintaining that feeling of financial motivation becomes almost second nature throughout the coming year.

To get started you will need to sit down with a pen and notebook.

Begin by getting out all your old bills from 2009 and get a feel for your typical spending habits. It’s easy to see that a large portion of your income is going to be taken up by rent or mortgage payments, and in today’s economic climate that is unlikely to change. However, other areas can be tightened up; for example, the phone and power bills can often be reduced by choosing different plans, using power more efficiently etc.

Don’t feel disheartened by the fact that probably 80% of your income is taken up by the necessities in life like a roof over your head, food, heating, gas etc. This is normal, modern day life requires a lot of expense, but it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy life too. So realistically consider the things you enjoy in life and be committed to allowing for entertainment expenses. In short, a happy budgeter is a better budgeter.

If being an organized budgeter has not been one of your strengths in life chances are you have not kept receipts to review spending in area’s such a feeding your shoe addiction, keeping your home stylish, eating out, going to the movies and other ‘luxuries’ in life. Indeed we should all have the ability to distinguish between need’s and wants, but in order to set a realistic budget we must also accept that we will have wants, so identify them and include those spends in your budget for the coming year.

In one column on your note paper make a list of all your regular commitments, your rent or mortgage being the first.

Continue the list with all your regular bills, phone, internet, power, cable TV etc and write down the amount they usually are in a column alongside, some will be fixed whilst other may fluctuate depending on use, so just write down an estimated amount. Don’t forget things like insurances and school fee’s, and of course loans.

Now break these figures down to fit in with your income cycle, so for example if you receive your power bill every 3 months, but get paid every fortnight, then you will divide the bill by 6 and this will tell you how much out of your fortnightly income needs to be set aside for an expense. Looking at it this way means you will begin to think of your power bill as a $40 expense each pay, rather than a bill that is coming sometime down the track.

Now go back to the column where you have listed your bills and begin adding other things that are common spends for you according to your own unique lifestyle. Perhaps you drink coffee on the way to work everyday, that $3 coffee could mean a $21 commitment out of your pay cheque. You might be a regular lotto player, buy a weekly magazine, the daily paper. All these seemingly insignificant spends could add up to quite a bit as you are trying to keep a hold on your budget while wondering where all the money goes. The trick to being in control is a simple as being honest and realistic within reason allow yourself these simple pleasures.

Now we come to identifying our wants, for example, clothing is a necessity but most clothing purchases are actually not, again, there is nothing wrong with having a love for fashion, just acknowledge it and plan for it. Perhaps consider the time you are most likely to spend up on clothing, during the end of financial year sales perhaps, or at the beginning of each new fashion season. By understanding your normal spending patterns you will be in a much better position to make wiser choices when it comes to buying the things you want and by the end of the evening you should have a very clear idea of your personal spending habits and be ready to commit to a new financial you in 2010.

Now that you have a handle on your normal spending habits you should also consider setting aside a little each week for unexpected emergencies, and of course having a savings plan is always a good idea, but if you are in debt, focus on paying down that debt before worrying about savings.

One more thing. Before putting away all your old bills and new notes take a moment to focus on your goal to be a better budgeter in 2010. Close your eyes and take a deep breath, no matter how tight your budget, how deep your debt, you can improve things over the coming year. To make it easier you will need to create your own weekly budget planner either in a notebook or on a spreadsheet, after all, it’s no good having all the best intentions of a new year’s resolution if you don’t have the tools achieve it. So for great advice why not subscribe to my mailing list and then pop over to my shop to find out the features and benefits of using my own Budgeting System, it’s only $5 and worth every penny if I do say so myself. Go there now and start off the new year with a true sense of financial control, then pop out to the January sales and grab yourself a fab pair of shoes to celebrate!…it’s okay, none of us are made of steel.

Don’t you find nothing brings our finances closer to the front of our mind more than Christmas? A Popular topic of conversation around September is, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s nearly Christmas already!!!!’

As we begin to see signs appear saying ‘Layby Now for Christmas’ and ‘Taking Christmas Orders Now’ we can’t help but begin to get a little stressed, especially if we are already living that pay cheque to pay cheque lifestyle already.

Now there are all sorts of ways to relieve that stress, but it’s a little late for me to get into that only two days before Christmas! But, what I would like to talk about today is preparing for the year ahead, as with Christmas upon us and the New Year looming around the corner there is no better time than now to start thinking about your budget.

We’ve heard a lot of doom and gloom over the past year about corporate collapses, mortgage crisis, rising unemployment and the global economic downturn, however, it is possible to ride through these difficult times by taking one evening to really have an honest look at our spending habits and see where we can make improvements.

Take some time out as early in the New Year as possible to pull out old bills and note the pattern of spending they represent. For example, your power bill may reflect much higher usage at certain times of the year due to heating or air conditioning. Once you have identified this pattern it will be much easier to prepare for it so that paying those higher bills doesn’t cause undue pain in the year ahead.

You may be wondering how knowing you’ve got big bills coming will change the pain they cause. Well, it’s really as simple as calculating a figure to set aside out of each pay cycle to put towards those future bills that will make your life so much easier.

Preparing for future dated expenses is one of the most important aspects of planning and budgeting successfully. It’s easy to feel that some weeks you have little or no bills to pay and therefore have more money to indulge in other areas, however this is really an illusion because on the weeks you do have a big bill arrive you will really feel the strain on your budget trying to cover it out of one pay cheque. In fact, many people I talk to about budgeting tell me that they feel they are in a constant catch up mode because having to pay a big bill meant they got behind in other commitments and so begins the cycle of stress trying to make ends meet.

So, get a bit savvy with your finances. Look over 2009 and work out how much you actually spent on bills over the entire year. Divide that figure by 52 and you will have a weekly figure to set aside. Set that money aside somewhere separate from your regular everyday bank account, it could be a money jar, but a free online bank account is ideal.

If this concept is entirely new to you and you have absolutely no funds set aside for bills then you can expect to still have weeks where you will need to top up your jar/bank account to cover a bill, but don’t give in, persevere and stick to that regular set aside figure, and within a short time you will find that your household budget will be so much more manageable. In fact, you will even find that you have more money to indulge on other things than you did before as you will be breaking out of that stressful lifestyle known as ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ and replacing it with a budget that you are in control of, rather than the other way round.

Bring on 2010!

I used to go traipsing off to the pine forest each year to hand pick a Chrissy Tree, but each year I got more and more saddened by the whole process feeling guilty that I was killing a tree just to decorate my living room for a week or two. I used to always say to my husband, “oh I feel bad, I feel like it is trying not to make eyeconact with me in the hopes I won’t choose it”…eventually we settled for a fake tree, but still make the trip to the forest each year to snip a few bits for garlands….you need the smell you know, to get that real Christmasy feeling.

Anyway, you can imagine how much I laughed when I came across this….You’ve gotta read it from the bottom up okay…..and please excuse the explitives, it wouldnt sound as good without them

As I waft and flitter around the web doing my social butterfly thing I often get people asking me about me and suggesting I write more about me in my blog. I hadn’t intended to do much of that in this particular blog as I plan to have a blog specifically dedicated to the purpose, but, seeing as right now this is the only blog I’ve got and I am the BudgetMama I figured, why not tell whoever reads this a little bit more about the woman behind the BudgetMama Phenomenon, (lol, I made that up, sounds good huh).
This slideshow says a lot…

I’m from a tiny little island in the English channel called Jersey, (which incidentally is the place ‘New Jersey’ was named after). My Grandparents always called me Jerseygirl, so that’s why you may have seen my user name in other places (like Twitter) as JerseygirlinOz….which brings me to where I am living these days, Oz, aka Australia, Down Under; the big island you pretty much can’t miss on the map. I live in that little bit done the bottom, another island called Tasmania, it’s a pretty big island but an island just the same. It was in Australia that I met my husband who would you believe is also from an island, Samoa to be precises. Five years after we were married we had our daughter, Tenille, down here in Tasmania….so it’s pretty safe to say I’m an islander through and through and couldn’t imagine living anywhere that isn’t surrounded by water.

Okay, well I’m not going to go on and on about me because I am a multifaceted woman with  many different ideas, interests and attitudes and of course  my  BudgetMama philosophy is just one of them. And it would be a little vain of me to think anyone would really be interested in all this anyway. But, I will pop back and add to the category more from time to time, but sooner or later I’ll be setting up a blog just for me.

In the mean time if you want to know more about how I came to be the BudgetMama, go to the About Me tab in the menu at the top of the page.

Now, I really must choof, I’ve got so much to do, feed the cats, get dinner ready, post my Chrissy cards, call my sister, shave my legs, give my munchkin a bit of attention……….. sorry, are you still here? Go on, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of your own stuff to do

It’s been ages since I made a post I know, but for those of you who are keen to improve your budgeting skills then you’ll be glad to know my absense was due to me revamping my site, adding some video tutes for my subscribers and also getting busy with some family stuff….on the subject of which, Christmas is almost upon us and I’m feeling a tad old, I used to be able to shop till I dropped, or should I say it took a lot longer to drop when I shopped! Now I need to come home for a Nanna nap after only a hour and a half!

Anyway, I’m pleased to say I have managed to get through my gift shopping without pulling out my credit card once, maybe that is because I no longer own a credit card, but it is also because I am becoming quite expert at planning and budgeting ahead of time for everything……PLUS, my family no longer buy gifts for each other (in the grown up arena anyway), so most of my spending is on food and festivities. I shall write a blog post on that very subject soon.

For now I am off to add the sign up box for my BudgetMama Boot Camp course into the sidebar of the blog, and while there I shall add a new category to my posts which will be all about me. A lot of people have said they would like to get to know me on a more personal level. I know I know, it is absolutely and entirely worthy of a whole new blog, but for now I shall just make it a category of this one