Household Budget Planner This Simple Personal: Fill & Download for Free

Being poor on £84,000 after tax shows a serious inability to manage money. If you are in that position, I strongly recommend using things like the Budget Planner from the Money Advice Service, and taking a look at the Rowntree link I have provided.Allowing for the cost of children, that income places you in the top 12%[1] of disposable income in the country. Nine out of ten people the UK have less money to spend than this family. (For reference, a single person on this income would be in the top 2%.)The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has developed a view[2] of what the minimum income a family needs to take a reasonable part in society, which involves things like socialising, taking simple holidays, enjoying entertainment, and having access to a car. Their view is that a family is able to live acceptably after tax and benefits on £34,000/year.Of course, housing costs can vary, and if your income requires you to live in the South East, then that £34,000 is probably not enough. But nobody is forced to live in Central London.Footnotes[1] Where do you fit in?[2] Minimum Income Calculator

TWO WORDS - Financial PlanningInterestingly enough, financial planning appears to be a hard task for most of us, even for the ones with a strong finance background. After all, if you are savvy enough to be interested in modern portfolio theory and its applications, you would expect yourself to be a personal finance guru as well right? I’m afraid the answer is no! It is mind blowing the number of finance professionals who can easily keep a three-hour conversation about the latest findings on the asset management space, on the right way to calculate the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) for a beautiful 387 lines excel-sheet DCF or on how smart betas are the new popular kid on the block, but… as soon as you shift the conversation to Money Management 101, they block, they don’t have a single clue on where to start.Sadly, this is true…so now imagine the pain the average Joe goes through with all those credit/debit cards, loan payments, retirement plans and everything else the financial industry pushes us to allegedly “improve our lives”. Now you are starting to see the bigger picture and where we are going with this.Don’t worry, we have been there before and throughout this series we will walk you through the main steps on how to become your own personal finance wizard.Here are some numbers regarding financial planning…Before we jump into the statistics, it is important to stress why you must have a detailed financial plan and the benefits you can get from it. For this purpose, Forbes’ contributor Laura Shin wrote an amazing article on the “10 Reasons Why Financial Plans Aren’t Just for the 1%”.You can check the 10 reasons on the infographic below but we strongly advise you to read the article as Laura really touches the key points when describing each one of the reasons.So, how many of us really follow a rigorous written-down financial plan to help us control our expenses and increase our quality of life? As expected, exact numbers are extremely hard to estimate but taking the typical U.S. household as a benchmark, the 2013 Household Financial Planning survey conducted by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (CFP Board) revealed that only 19% are categorized under “Comprehensive Planners”. But what exactly is a comprehensive planner? According to the CFP, comprehensive planners are all households that “have made a comprehensive financial plan that goes beyond a simple household budget to cover things like retirement savings and insurance”. That doesn’t seem a lot of trouble right? Right, but the number is still quite daunting nevertheless. Moreover, the report revealed that only 16% of U.S. households were “likely to get a comprehensive financial plan in the next 12 months!”to keep on reading Page on opseeker.com

Here are some simple strategies to get you started budgeting. The right system makes budgeting easier than you think… and the payoff makes it worthwhile.5 EASY STEPS TO CREATE A BUDGET STRATEGY THAT YOU’LL ACTUALLY USE!1. GET INTO THE MINDSETAre you revved up? What about your partner and your family? As you put together your spending and savings strategy, consider how you’ll bring your household on board.As you’re organizing your finances, think of how your partner can participate in the recordkeeping and goal-setting, and how you’ll frame the conversation with your household members. Don’t forget, you’re also setting a positive example for your kids, both in the present and for their future.2. CREATE A BUDGET BINDERTechnology makes a lot of things easy. File sharing applications, accounting software, cloud storage… it’s all great, and there’s definitely a place for it. I’ll even share some tech tips later on.But what I love about the binder system is that it’s handy. You don’t need to fire up your computer, figure out spreadsheets or software, and make sure you’ve backed up your files. Plus, you can grab your binder and sit down with your partner and family whenever you want to make notes and update your records.Trust me. It’s the path of least resistance. You’ll want to pick out a 2″-4″ binder on Amazon or at your local dollar store. You can even recycle one from last year’s school supplies.Download and print a monthly budget planner sheet.3. TRACK DOWN & ORGANIZE YOUR PAPERWORKFirst, gather your cardboard boxes or storage totes full of unopened bank statements, bills and loose receipts.I recommend using an out-of-the-way area where you can power through this part without distraction or feeling like you have to stuff everything back into a box halfway through the project. You can use as many binder divider sheets as you want, as long as they’re clearly labeled and they make sense to you:Utilities, insurance, rent receipts, loan and bank statements, etcetera. You’ll keep your paycheck stubs here, too. Keep your documents filed by date so they’re easy to find, but use a method you can realistically maintain. Save retail register receipts for last. For example, tally up your gas station receipts for each month, and put them in a medium-sized Manila envelope.The same goes for grocery receipts, which you’ll want to keep on hand to decide how to prioritize your food purchases. Stash your envelopes in an inside binder pocket, or punch holes along one side to insert into the binder rings.If you’re finding a lot of stuff from prior years, you’ll want to keep whatever applies to your tax returns. Otherwise, go ahead and get rid of it. While it’s useful to have historical data, you don’t want to go overboard.Have a big trash can ready for junk inserts, envelopes, and other discarded materials, and try to adhere to this rule: Only handle each financial document once. This means, as soon as you locate it, either put it in your binder or chuck it.4. START CRUNCHING NUMBERSIncome-Total your net income from all sources, and mark your paydays on your binder’s dedicated calendar.Fixed Expenses-Write down your recurring fixed monthly expenses: Utilities, insurance, mortgage, childcare, entertainment subscriptions, etc.Variable Expenses-Write down your monthly variable expenses: Groceries, entertainment, laundry, dry cleaning, pet grooming, gas.Annual Expenses-Total up quarterly or annual expenses such as routine (or unexpected) auto repairs and maintenance, carpet cleaning, gift giving, taxes, and personal travel; once you have a total for each category, divide them by 12.With rough numbers, you’ll see how your expenses compare to your income. Use my budget planner worksheet to organize expenses into different categories for a more detailed view.Can you see any glaringly obvious ways you can save some money? When you have the numbers in front of you, does it change the way you feel about certain purchases or spending habits?Now you can realistically earmark portions of your income for living expenses while making more careful decisions about how you spend your mad money.5. MAINTAIN MOMENTUMOnce you’ve organized your binder, experienced your wake-up call, and set up a budget, you’ll want to keep your binder where you can easily and quickly access it at home.Do your best to file away receipts at least once a week. Pick an evening when you can spend 15 to 20 minutes reviewing your budget and “catching up” on your filing.If you want to go wireless, you can take quick snapshots on your smartphone and organize your receipts anytime on a productivity application like Evernote, or use a portable, wireless document scanner to archive your receipts.Just be sure to have a sensible organizing system for your receipt images, and don’t forget to write down your spending data on your “hard copy” planning sheets.You’ll adapt your system to your own preferences, and you’ll round out your budgeting strategy as you learn more about—and improve—your spending habits.If you’re like me, you’ll find it useful to keep a scratch pad in your binder for money saving ideas, and you’ll definitely come up with your own tricks to make your binder (and your budget) work for you and your household.Don’t give up. You’re building a new habit, and according to research, it takes an average of two months to make it stick. You’ll be amazed by how quickly you’ll accumulate savings, and how you’ll find money to pay down your debt.If you have any questions let me know, I’m happy to help.