Any advice for making a personal budget?

It seems nearly impossible to pay off old credit card debt and save money. Are there any good budgets/formula's in order to pay off debt, stay debt free, and still save some money to travel or buy a house? My first plan of winning the lottery is not working out so well... ;-)


Thanks!Any advice for making a personal budget?
This worked for me when I first started out on a budget- maybe it'll click with you, too:





1.) Figure out how much money you need to cover mandatory expenses. (Rent, electric bills, basic groceries, credit card minimum monthly payments, etc.) Keep this much money in your checking account each month.





2.) Look at the amount of money you have coming in that is in addition to your mandatory expenses. This will combine to be your savings money, your pay-off-that-credit-card-debt money, and your fun money. Maybe your amount is $600- you could put $200 in each category.





3.) Pay yourself first- I would set up both a short-term emergency fund, and a permanent retirement savings fund. Even if you think you have too much debt to save for retirement right now, I think it is very important to begin, at whatever level! If your employer offers a 401(k) with a match, enroll, even if it is only at 1%! Once you see how easy 1% is, you will be motivated to bump it up until the next thing you know, you're saving 10% of your paycheck, which is a great goal.





You should also have an emergency fund so that the next time the car breaks down, you don't have to put it on the credit card. Choose a high-yield savings account. I do mine online through ING Direct- you get 4.5% interest at the moment, and it's really easy to set up automatic deposits from your checking account. Even if you can only do $30 a month, you will still have $360 at the end of the year. If you can do more, fantastic! This emergency fund can double as your home buying fund, or fund for whatever other short-term financial goals you have.





4.) Now, to pay down the credit card debt. If you have multiple cards, look at the statements and see which one is charging you the highest interest rate. That is the one you want to focus on paying down first. Of course you will need to make the minimum payment on all of them to protect your credit score, but whatever amount you can pay above the minimums, put towards the one with the highest rate. You've got to do this- it will take years and years to pay them off if you only pay the minimum!





5.) About those credit cards- put them in a big Ziploc bag, and fill it with water. Now, shove the whole bag in your freezer. This way, if you have a genuine emergency, you have your cards, but it will be a lot harder to make any impulse buys.





6.) Whatever amount you designated for fun money, take it out in cash. If you are going to buy something you want, as opposed to something you need, pay cash for it. If you have cash in your wallet, you can buy it. If you don't, you can't- it's as simple as that. At the same time, if you have cash, you can buy it without feeling one bit guilty about it!





When I first started budgeting, I beat myself up so much over every single purchase, I was pretty miserable. This method finally allowed me to stick to a budget and feel happy about myself.Any advice for making a personal budget?
Hi,





The general idea is to know how much you make, know how much you spend before you spend and track your expenses once you spend. And now the show-off bit :) I run a website, http://www.expenseregister.com . It is a free service. You can create a budget, track your spending and there are some neat tools to do that. And your question on creating a budget, check out the Budget section in expenseRegister.com (once you log in), we suggest default spending limits for each category of expenses.





Credit Card debt... this is a tough one. I recently transferred my balances to Capital One. They had a no transfer charge and no interest until Nov 2007 deal and I have also heard that they don't increase your APR the first time you are late on a payment. So look out for such deals.
make some lists (i know-not always fun!):





bills-what you pay each month on average %26amp; any bills that only come around every few months;





income-in an average month, what do you make each week/2weeks-make this number an average (not too high, not too low.





debt-what you have to pay off (put your current credit cards here and don't use them anymore)





weekly-think about what you purchase weekly-what can stay, what should go, how much does it add up to?





savings-balance everything out, is there enough here to start saving even 10dollars a week? maybe it's time to eliminate a service or downgrade a service, or sell some items you don't need anymore.....

pores