Basic principles of budgeting. How to manage a family budget - my personal experience, pros and cons. What to bet on in terms of an assistant

Family finances can be compared to building a house. The foundation of a house is the formation of a family budget, the walls of a house are the formation of a family reserve fund, the roof of a house is an investment in profitable assets, so to speak, a foundation for the future. Attempts to change the order of building your finances are simply guaranteed to lead to failure. When forming a family budget, the income item should be greater than the expense item. You ask: how much? At least 10%. You can’t live 100%, you should always have money left to form your reserve fund, and also, if possible, to invest in the future.

Any adult knows that money does not grow on trees, it must be earned. Most people cope quite well with the issue of making money, but few achieve wealth. What is the reason? The family budget consists of two main items: income and expenses. If you don't know how to manage your money wisely, then no matter how much you earn, you will still not have enough money.

The first step to financial prosperity is maintaining your family budget. You need to know exactly how much you earn and how much you spend and on what. To manage the family budget, I made a small program in Excel . It allows you to control your expenses and income. The program table is made on one printed sheet and allows you to clearly see your expenses and income. I think you shouldn’t use more complex programs; everything ingenious is always simple.

The most common mistake when managing a family budget is the absence of a responsible person for certain expenses. Money is piled up in one pile and everyone takes as much as they see fit and spends it on what they see fit. Money is spent chaotically, which is almost guaranteed to lead to financial problems. If you decide to combine family finances, then each family member should be assigned certain expense items. The envelope method is well suited for accounting finances. For each expense item, one envelope is allocated, which contains a pre-agreed amount. Only the person who is responsible for this expense item takes money from the envelope. The money put in the envelope should be enough for a month. If you do not want to combine your family's finances, then everyone can keep track of their finances separately. The principle of maintaining a family and personal budget is the same. With this method of maintaining a family budget, you can use the same program I wrote. At the end of the month, you can bring together your personal budgets to decide how much and what the family spends on as a whole. In any case, the family budget must be drawn up with a surplus, that is, income must exceed expenses. After forming your family budget, you can begin to create your own reserve fund. The size of the reserve fund should range from three to twelve monthly expenditure budgets. Once you have formed your emergency fund, you can move on to investments.

The second common mistake when managing a family budget is the principle: “I take it all on myself.” One of the family members begins to dominate, switching all financial flows to himself. It is not right. Every adult in the family has the right to spend money, and children must be taught to spend money wisely. It is necessary to decide at the family council who will spend the family funds and on what. For example, someone is responsible for utility bills, someone takes care of food costs, someone takes care of clothes and shoes for the whole family. Each family is unique in its own way, so you must decide for yourself how to distribute your expenses. Accordingly, income will need to be divided. If your child is old enough, he needs to be taught how to handle money. It will be necessary to allocate small amounts to him and give him responsibilities, for example, buying bread and other products. That is, the child will also be responsible for fulfilling some items of your family budget.

The third, fairly common mistake is: “Everything at once.” As soon as a person has money, he wants to make all his dreams come true at once. It is not right. Money must be spent as planned. For these purposes, a family budget and a personal financial plan are drawn up, which sets out the main goals and the time frame for achieving them. The program for drawing up a personal financial plan can be downloaded at the bottom of the page. The program is quite simple, just fill out the cells and receive the amount of monthly contributions to achieve your goals. Convenient enough.

Family budget is the most important component when planning your expenses and income. It should be carried out, and at the same time, in case of unforeseen circumstances, funds for its implementation are taken from the reserve fund. If major changes have occurred in your life, you need to reconsider your family budget and investment goals and make the necessary adjustments. You should not carry out the plan at any cost; soberly assess the situation and make timely adjustments. We are given life only once; we shouldn’t complicate it in pursuit of an extra million. The accumulated funds are unnecessary for the deceased, so in life you need to adhere to the principle of moderation.

Rokin Alexey

Do you constantly lack money to buy even the necessary things? Is your money constantly flowing through your fingers? Think about this situation. The reason for this may not be low income, but the inability to manage your finances and plan your budget.

A few words about personal budget

A personal budget is your personal plan, which displays all the items for, as well as individual rules for managing finances and a personal financial plan for the future. Maintaining a personal budget and planning your expenses does not require any special knowledge or a lot of time.

The main components of maintaining a personal budget are:

1. Systematic accounting and control of income and expenses.
2. Rational cost management.
3. Planning of expenses and income.

The first stage is planning income and expenses

In order to plan your income and expenses, you need to start systematically recording them so that you always have information about what you can save on without limiting yourself to the essentials.

Experts advise keeping a special notebook to record all your expenses. To begin with, spend money as usual, but write down any, even the most insignificant expenses.

The main task at this stage is to determine the reason for the rapid disappearance of money from the personal budget.

Such regular entries after each purchase make you think about its feasibility. Then look at your notes, and you will probably see a significant number of unnecessary expenses on your list, expenses that you could easily avoid.

After two months, divide your expenses into categories: food, utilities, transportation, necessary purchases, leisure and entertainment.

Second stage - distribution of expenses

Optimal distribution of expenses without denying yourself anything essential.

Experts advise:

1. Reduce each expense item in proportion to each other, that is, deduct funds in the same percentage.
2. Analyze your expense items. Among them there will probably be expenses that seem trivial at first glance, but then add up to large sums.
3. Do not strive to buy things that are advertised as economical, do not get carried away with buying things on sale or in bulk purchases. Due to the expected discount and expected savings, you will unconsciously strive to buy more, that is, your expenses will not be less, but more.

Third stage - optimization

Once you have accurately identified your real needs and thought about how to optimize your expenses, you can start planning them.

Any planning, experts say, is an essential component of success in any area of ​​life. Financial planning is the key to material well-being, the opportunity to achieve many goals, and become a financially independent person.

Financial plans are divided into short-term: up to one year, and long-term.

Long-term planning is quite complex, it can be affected by various circumstances: prolonged inflation, or unexpected expenses.

Experts advise making a personal financial plan and trying to stick to it. In your personal financial plan, record:

1. current financial situation,
2. personal financial goals,
3. ways to achieve them.

Short-term planning and rational management of personal budget

After receiving your salary, set aside part of the money for basic expenses (mandatory payments, transport, food), and leave the other part, even a small one, as savings. Divide this amount into four parts (four weeks) and place them in envelopes. Open each new envelope only on the eve of the coming week. The less money there is in these envelopes, the more rational you will be in your spending.

Important advice from experts. If you are prone to reckless purchases, carry only the most necessary amount of money with you.

Long-term personal budget planning

The best incentive to control expenses and maintain a personal budget during its long-term planning will be specific goals: for example, a purchase or payment. When planning long-term, it is important to clearly understand your goals and the priority of your goals. Take a piece of paper and rank your goals and objectives in order of significance, importance, and urgency. After analyzing expenses and setting goals, you can start planning. It will be possible to plan expenses based on your own accounting of monthly expenses, and it is recommended to place the amount allocated for savings, for example, in a bank deposit, thereby eliminating the possibility of spending the deferred funds.

Experts advise making a table with the following points:

1. estimated time of achievement,
2. the total amount needed to achieve the goal,
3. the amount set aside each month for this purpose,
4. actual deadline for achievement.

And one more small but important piece of advice. When clearly planning your personal budget and starting to live by its rules, sometimes include some amounts in your expenses in order to pamper yourself with something, do not get carried away by severe asceticism.

Andrey Lipov

One of my friends is concerned that he constantly lacks money. He borrows from friends, takes out loans, and still doesn’t have enough to buy the things he wants. Because of this, he is constantly half-depressed, half-irritated. He tried reading different books on personal finance, and vowed to follow their advice to start saving and saving. However, nothing worked for him.

Very often, reading such literature, you are surprised at how meticulous and detailed a person must be in order to fulfill all the requirements of a personal financier. Does the path to financial freedom really lie through turning into a stale cracker and doing things like collecting all the small change in bags and counting it at the end of the month (as recommended in one of the books!)

Not at all! After all, all people are lazy and do not want to make unnecessary movements when they can get by with a few, but the most important ones. Let's see what twists and turns in personal finance can be cut short. Here are the five main points you need to focus on. But first...

The golden rule of personal budgeting

For the really, really lazy, the rich hamster advises learning one simple rule:

Always spend less than you earn

If you want to spend more, roll your lip, or earn more. Harsh, but true. Any deviation from this rule leads to the situation described at the beginning of the article.

1. Calculate your expenses

So, if you intend to dig a little deeper than remembering the one rule mentioned above, congratulations. Your life will become somewhat easier, although this will require some effort. So, the first thing you need to do in our personal budgeting system for lazy people is to count your expenses.

If you make all your purchases using a plastic card, it will be easier for you to do this. Go to online banking and request a monthly card statement. Read the report and write down what categories your finances go into.

Remember also what you spent the cash on and also divide it into groups, at least approximately.

2. Make a shopping list

Now it's a much more pleasant procedure. Imagine what you would like to buy in the next three to six months. This could be the purchase of some things, or other expenses: repairs, travel or training.

Do the same for the period of one to five years.

The magic is that “shopping list” sounds better psychologically than the word “budget.” Some people get pleasure from just making a shopping list and imagining how they will get these things.

To make it even more enjoyable, dream about some things that you did not include in the list, but that would help you experience joy every day in the near or distant future. Put these things on the list. They will motivate you.

3. Divide future expenses by month

Now that you have a list of purchases, distribute their cost by month, starting from now and ending with the time when you plan to purchase them. Voila - you have a financial plan. That is, every month you will “purchase” a piece of a new car or a few days of vacation.

4. Start saving and saving according to your plan

If you manage to regularly save money as planned in the previous paragraph, you should definitely experience psychological comfort from the fact that you actually almost have the thing you want. After all, you have already acquired its invisible part.

The difficulty is that you don’t take this dream away from yourself. There is only one way to do this - hide money from yourself. Use deposits, give money to your other half for safekeeping - the main thing is to protect yourself in every possible way from the temptation to spend it. You can read in this article what options there are to save money for several months.

5. Stop Crazy Overspending

As already mentioned, the main enemy of a lazy hamster is himself. He is lazy to even think and does not want to realize the consequences. Therefore, it would be a good practice to “lay down straws” and protect yourself from nonsense.

One of the effective methods to protect yourself from unnecessary spending is the envelope method. Since you already calculated the main cost items in the first paragraph, you know how much and for what you need money per month (you should also have a reserve fund for unforeseen needs, this is the topic of this separate article). Find as many envelopes as you have expense items in your personal budget. When you receive your salary, fill these envelopes with money and spend only them.

Envelope for fun

Well, in order not to become a terrible cracker, be sure to have an “envelope for pleasure”. You can put as much money into it as you can and consider it necessary to spend on it. This has a stunning psychological effect. You will feel that you have fully earned this pleasure and you will not be at all annoyed about unnecessary expenses.

So, maintaining a personal budget, even if you don’t bother too much, turns out to be quite a feasible thing. Make this a good practice, and you will definitely be visited by a feeling of confidence, order and pleasure from spending money wisely.

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Today, a huge amount of literature has been written on the topic of competent budgeting, many training courses have been created, and various trainings and seminars are held. But, unfortunately, not everyone has the time (and money) to study the relevant materials and courses. And agree, how nice it would be if you could just read one article that would briefly, competently and concisely outline the basic principles of managing and controlling personal finances? We hasten to congratulate you - this is exactly the article in front of you! And believe me, after reading it, managing your personal budget will become much easier for you.

A few words about the budget

So what is a budget? A budget is a document (electronic or paper) in which all items of income and expenses for a specific period of time are regularly visually and in detail displayed, i.e. all sources of inflow of funds, all expenses, as well as any individual rules for managing finances and a personal financial plan for the future. To a person who has never been seriously involved in budget management, at first glance this may seem like a complicated process, requiring some special knowledge or skills, a huge amount of time, etc. In fact, there is nothing difficult about it for the simple reason that it is just a skill that just needs to be mastered. Budgeting includes several basic parts, which are supplemented with others over time, acquiring the features of a more complex system. But you always need to start with the simplest. The main components of maintaining a personal budget are:

• Accounting for income and expenses
• Cost optimization
• Planning income and expenses

Remember that you need to manage your budget in exactly this order, because... each subsequent point is a logical continuation of the previous one. Let's consider each of them separately.

Accounting for income and expenses

Income accounting is necessary so that, firstly, you clearly know where every penny comes from in your wallet, and secondly, what specific amount is your monthly income. Since a year consists of 12 months, and the source of income for the vast majority of people is wages, then we will continue to charge one month for a “specific time period”.

But if the situation with income is quite simple: received - recorded, received - recorded, etc., then with expenses the situation is somewhat different.

As already mentioned, 20% of the income of many people who do not manage their budget “disappears.” Moreover, this happens even in cases where it seems that you know exactly what you are spending your money on. And this amount could be used wisely: spent on something significant and truly necessary, or postponed. You can “return” this money, but until you know where it “disappears”, you will not be able to do this. This is the first reason why you need to keep track of expenses. And you need to do this every day.

Get yourself a separate notebook and always carry it with you. To begin with, spend money in your usual way, as you are used to. But be sure to record all your expenses, even if it is 7.5 rubles for a cake or 2 rubles for a box of matches. Divide the sheets of the expense notebook into two parts - “purchase name” and “amount”. Place dates at the top of the sheets. Don't categorize your purchases - this is unnecessary now, just write them down, because... your main task is to develop such a habit and determine the reason for the “disappearance” of money. You shouldn’t hope for this either, because... the very next day you will diligently remember what you spent on.

Check the remaining money against your notes weekly to check that your entries are accurate and systematic, and to see if there is anything on your list that you could give up without causing significant harm to yourself. You might be surprised to learn that such things exist. At the end of the month, count all such expenses and determine their total amount - this way you will get the desired result, i.e. Finally, you will find out where one fifth of all your money is regularly spent. Now you can henceforth refrain from such expenses and direct the “found” money in another direction.

In addition, regular entries in a notebook after each purchase will automatically force you to think about the feasibility of the purchase, which means you will approach your expenses more consciously. After 2-3 months of this practice, having already gotten used to it, you can divide your expenses into categories (food, transportation, utilities, entertainment, etc.).

Cost optimization

Cost optimization implies rational use of funds. And this is by no means saving money. Saving is the abandonment of what is pleasant, familiar and enjoyable in favor of what is necessary in order to save money. Optimization is the competent distribution of personal financial flows across all items of one’s expenses without the need to deny oneself anything essential. You may have to give up something, but it will be so insignificant that, in fact, it will not even be felt. Cost optimization is based on the following principles, which are very important to understand:

• There are no expense items that are not important to you. To spend less, you should reduce each item in proportion to each other, i.e. deduct funds from each item in the same percentage.
• Those expense items that require the greatest amount of funds from your budget are subject to the greatest optimization, because... their costs can most likely be reduced.
• There is no need to strive to purchase things advertised as economical, or to purchase in bulk. The human psyche is structured in such a way that due to the apparent cheapness or supposed discount, he will unconsciously strive to take more, which means that he will spend more.

Once you know exactly your basic and real needs and determine how best to optimize expenses, you can begin distributing funds according to goals and time periods. For example, having received a salary, set aside part of the money for basic expenses (mandatory payments), leave the other part (even if very small) as savings, and divide the remaining amount into the four weeks that make up the month. Separate these four parts from each other, placing them, for example, in envelopes. Open each new envelope only on the eve of the coming week. The less money in each of these envelopes, the more disciplined and rational you will be in your spending. And one more useful tip: the more prone you are to thoughtless purchases, the less money it is recommended to carry with you during the day.

The above practice is actually very effective. If you stick to it for at least six months, you will learn to save decent amounts of money, and will also develop the habit of spending money only on what is really necessary, while not only not worsening, but also improving the quality of your life.

Financial planning

Anything is an essential component of success in any area of ​​life, because... allows you not only to divide the process into several important stages, but also to see new opportunities. Financial planning is the key to material well-being, the presence of a “safety cushion” in unforeseen life situations, the opportunity to achieve many material goals, and even become a financially independent person.

Financial (and any other) plans are usually divided into short-term (up to 1 year), medium-term (from 1 to 3 years) and long-term (from 3 years or more). Accordingly, you need to plan incrementally. Firstly, achieving goals is a step-by-step process in which the implementation of medium- or long-term plans may depend on short-term or medium-term plans. And, secondly, there is always a certain threshold that we cannot overcome at present. In addition, there are some circumstances that cannot be influenced (inflation, sudden layoffs at work, unforeseen necessary expenses, etc.).

To be able to be prepared, if not for everything, then for a lot, you need to have a clear idea of ​​what you will do in a given situation, as well as develop your strategy for achieving your goals. All this includes financial planning.

The best time to get your budget and planning in order is at the beginning of the year. But, of course, there is no need to wait for its onset. Get down to business right away: define your goals, calculate your actions, look for new opportunities and options. This will be your first step towards prosperity and financial well-being.

In conclusion, I would just like to add that you should always remember that a competent attitude towards your budget should become part of your lifestyle, an incentive for professional, career and personal growth; a skill that will make wealth your faithful companion and guarantor of confidence in any life situation. All successful, wealthy and financially independent people talk about this. And to become one of them, you need to finally take care of your personal budget. And we wish you speedy success and good luck in this!

Do you know any other effective ways to manage a personal budget? We will be glad to receive your recommendations, advice and comments!

Constantly faced with situations of a lack of funds or the inability to afford a necessary but expensive thing, many do not even think that the reason for this may not be low income, but just the opposite - unjustified, thoughtless expenses. Instead of complaining that money seems to be slipping through your fingers, and there is no savings, it would be better to cope with current expenses, it would be better to sit down and analyze the family budget.

Yes, many people think that it is a long and tedious task to keep track of family finances, constantly record expenses, and make plans. Others say that this in some sense limits freedom of action, forces you to follow certain rules and think through your spending.

At the same time, they don’t even realize that planning has a large number of advantages and benefits, and with proper management of family finances, you can save decent amounts of money.

And then, no one forces you to keep complex accounting; you can develop a personal finance accounting system that suits a particular family, and it doesn’t take as much time as it seems at first glance.

There are several basic principles for maintaining and planning a home budget that will allow you to take control of the situation into your own hands.

1. In order to be able to analyze expenses, draw some conclusions, and engage in planning, you need to start systematically recording all income and expenses. After all, it’s not enough to just want to save up for some thing, or get rid of the pre-salary crisis; you need to have information about how you can free up money and what you can safely save on without compromising your needs.

There are now a lot of ways to do home accounting: from a special notebook as ancient as the world, to the most modern online services and stationary programs that automatically analyze data, issue reports, allow you to set financial goals and plan a budget. After spending a little time, you can quickly decide which accounting method is most suitable.

Advice: it is important that the process of maintaining personal accounting is enjoyable, uncomplicated and accessible, then this activity will not be abandoned after the first unsuccessful attempts to understand the unsuccessful program. Therefore, it is important to choose a tool that is both visually and functionally useful and enjoyable for the user.

2. So, a method of accounting has been found, and recording of income and expenses is successfully carried out. You can move to the next stage in a month, when at least some initial data for analysis has accumulated. Analysis, control and optimization of expenses is the second principle of home accounting.

Of course, you can only clearly see where the money is going from month to month after several months, but often even a superficial analysis of monthly results is very impressive. When you see with your own eyes how much money goes “to nowhere” every month, on all sorts of unnecessary nonsense (and this is usually no more or less, but about ten to thirty percent of the amount of income), then it becomes much easier to move along the intended path.

To begin with, it is worth assessing the cost items and, if possible, wisely reducing them. Everyone will have their own expense items: someone will make an effort and stop indiscriminately buying unnecessary magazines, which then gather dust in a pile under the coffee table, someone will give up the indefatigable eating of fast food, which not only leads to a waste of money, but also undermines health, etc. (there are thousands of such examples). However, such little things then add up to quite large sums.

3. How and what we spend money on depends on our life principles and goals. For optimal planning and savings, it is important to clearly understand your goals and be aware of their priority. It is advisable to analyze this on paper (for clarity), arranging goals and objectives in order of their significance and importance.

Goals can be long-term and short-term, global and smaller. From buying a computer or paying for training courses, to purchasing an apartment or car. This is necessary in order to then systematize and minimize costs. Agree, if the goal is to buy a car as quickly as possible, or to pay off a debt as quickly as possible, and for this the family is ready to save as much as possible, then the list of expenses will be significantly reduced.

After this simple analysis, you can also sort costs by urgency and importance. For example, you can distribute them into groups:

• necessary (groceries, rent, loan bills, etc.),
• necessary, but not urgent (investments, savings, etc.),
• other (entertainment, travel, non-essential items, etc.)

Of course, this is a simplified example, and everyone can (and should) have their own classification. Many programs offer ready-made expense categories, but if they are not suitable, they can be replaced.

4. Motivation plays a very important role in any business, and home accounting is no exception. Of course, the best incentive will be really visible savings and the emergence of free funds, the opportunity to achieve goals that, before accounting, could only be achieved with the help of loans. It is worth constantly reminding yourself why all this is being done and not deviating from your intended goals.

However, there is an equally important psychological component: although we are talking about material things, such a pleasant addition as peace of mind for your material well-being, confidence in a secure future - why is it a bad bonus for the time and effort spent on accounting for personal finances? And this is exactly the result that can be achieved by regularly and consistently working on your home budget: people learn to save, begin to save part of their salary, and form their own reserve fund. Then, having secured their family in case of a crisis, they accumulate funds for some acquisitions and investments, begin investing, and try to acquire new active and passive income in order to ensure the future of their children and their old age.

5. Now, after analyzing expenses and setting goals, you can start planning. Financial advisors usually recommend starting by calculating your savings amount. It can be 5-20% of income (those who have the goal of urgently accumulating a large amount can save much larger amounts for some time, of course, taking into account the necessary expenses).

6. It will be possible to plan expenses based on your own accounting of monthly expenses.

After analyzing previous expenses, getting rid of unnecessary items, and, possibly, including the necessary expenses of the next period, you need to enter budget amounts for each category of expenses into the home finance accounting program. Programs allow you to plan for a week, month, year.

7. Having formed a budget for the immediate period, at the end of it it will be necessary to analyze the result again, and, having made adjustments, move on to longer-term planning.

8. It is necessary to be prepared in advance for the fact that this is a rather difficult process - giving up old habits, saving and reasonable spending, following the planned budget. However, if there is desire and incentive, everything should work out. As they say: “the one who walks masters the road.”

And in conclusion, a little advice: when you start living according to the new “budget” rules, you need to remember to periodically include some amounts in your expense items in order to treat yourself to something, otherwise life can turn into complete deprivation.