Budget to save and get out of debt

Posted by admin on January 30, 2009

My process into the world of personal finance began a few months ago when my wife lost her job as a teacher.  We have both had good jobs throughout our career and made the most of our opportunities, but when she lost her job I felt like we needed to do something.  The first thing I did was make a budget.

While creating this budget I found that even cancelling child care and cutting back on everything we were still approximately $700 short per month.  Luckily we had some savings and my wife used her teaching certificate to begin substituting to bring in additional money.  In looking at the budget I noticed that we were spending $300 per month on paying down debt.  At that point I vowed to pay off all of our debt and begin using debt responsibly, but I didn’t want to drain our savings to eliminate our debt with the economy heading south.

If you are having trouble making ends meet and do not budget the best thing you can do is begin creating a budget.  You can find a template online many places or you can go to the MS Office website and download templates.  You can pick one that you like and change it to suite you.

My results have led to approx $200 per month in food savings, $100 per month in gas savings, and $150 per month less spent at Wal-Mart.

Find out where your money is going and start controlling it.