How to Create a Budget: Steps in Budgeting Process

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How to create a monthly budget calendar: Key steps in the budgeting process

Step 1: Track your expenses first
What sets apart a good budget from a bad one is that the best budgets use realistic spending limits you can actually stay within. Figuring out those limits is way easier to do if you know what you actually pay for and how much you spend on each of those things.

That’s why you should always start your budgeting journey off by tracking your expenses first. Do that for a minimum of three months before you move on to creating your actual budget.

Step 2: Grab a blank calendar to create your budget on
Most budgets are done by spreadsheet, but we prefer to use a calendar for several reasons:

• Spreadsheets are so formal and feel kind of stifling
• Calendars are just much easier to read and use than spreadsheets are
• Knowing when and how often you spend is way more helpful for understanding and changing your behavior

Here’s a sample budget with only the income listed

Sample budget with income and expenses listed

We’re pretty terrible at remembering our actual expenses, and we usually spend way more than we think we do.

And because our memories have got it all wrong, people often set their spending limits way too low to be realistic, and end up going through their budgeted amounts much faster than they thought they would.

That’s exactly why we had you start off with tracking your expenses, because you should base your budget on what you actually spend, not what you think you spend.

Going back through all three months that you tracked, you’re gonna look through every single expense and account for it on your budget, if it makes sense to.

As you go through each transaction, you’ll want to consider these three key questions:

The first essentials category is housing & utilities, so we’ll only focus on those for now. The first expense we have within this category is electricity. Going through the three key questions, let’s say your expense tracking calendars reveal this:

Again, that’s why the expense tracking thing is such a big deal, because it helps you base your budget on your spending patterns and no one else’s.

Housing & utilities expenses tend to be pretty consistent and straight-forward. Eventually, though, you will get to categories that aren’t as set in stone. Let’s show you how to work through those, using the groceries category as an example.

Sample expense tracking calendar with groceries highlighted

In the above example, we can see that this person tends to buy groceries roughly once a week, and spends between $120 to $180 each time they hit the supermarket.

In this case, you can just add one grocery entry for every week, for an amount in that dollar range.

Remember: Budgeting is simply about making reasonably predictions, so don’t complicate things and get yourself caught in analysis paralysis.

Step 5: Account for larger, less frequent expenses
There are a few tricky expenses that only come up once or twice a year, but they’re pretty pricey and you do have to pay them:

• Vehicle registration
• Car insurance
• Property taxes

It’s easy for these big annual or semi-annual expenses to sneak up on you, so build them into your budget by taking the total, dividing by 6 or 12 months as appropriate, and then adding them as an entry somewhere on your budget calendar.

There are two approaches to figuring out how much fun money to allot yourself:

Trick #1: Mull it over
Give a lot of thought to how you specifically want to use the money, rather than just leaving it generically labelled as “fun” on your calendar. For example, you might consider using that money to see a movie, or to go on an ice cream run.

Even if you don’t decide right away, the anticipation of being able to partake in at least some of that fun stuff will immediately start to put you in a good mood and give you a sense of excitement, before you’ve even spent a single penny!

Trick #2: Make your plans, then look forward to enjoying them
Once you do decide on how you’ll be putting that fun money to good use, update your calendar to reflect exactly how you’ll be using it, and move your entry to the date you plan to make it happen.

Having something to look forward to on your calendar and knowing that you’ll eventually get to enjoy it is surprisingly powerful and can even make the experience itself better!

Trick #3: Be selective and aim to maximize your joy

If you go with a set budget amount, over time, you’ll start to become a lot more selective about how you spend your fun money, which is a really good thing. The reality is, not all joys are created equal, and there will always be some things that bring you more joy & happiness than others.

When you’re not paying attention to how you spend, regret becomes an all too common emotion because you eventually realize that you kinda wasted your money on things that didn’t make you that happy. But by then, it’s too late and the money’s already gone.

On the other hand, when your fun money allowance becomes something you think about ahead of time, you aren’t gonna waste it on doing stuff that brings you only a mediocre level of happiness. You’ll naturally start to make choices that maximize your joy to money ratio, and that is money well-spent.

Trick #4: Less is more

Once we dull ourselves to an experience, we tend to enjoy it less. That’s why they say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that’s true not just of people, but of things and experiences as well.

The less often you do or buy something, the more special it feels when you actually get around to it. And it doesn’t take long for the feeling to set in once you decide to cut back on something.

How to tell if you’re spending too much

With your newly-created budget calendar, you can now check the overall health of your spending habits.

Add up your income for the income, subtract all of your other entries, and see how much money that leaves you with to put towards your money goals.

Money goals refers to any of the big-picture financial objectives you want to achieve, such as:

• Building up an emergency fund
• Making extra payments to pay off your credit cards and other debts
• Saving for your retirement
• Preparing to put a down payment on your very own home

Having money leftover at the end of each month is the only way you can work towards these goals that create security and wealth for yourself, so you wanna work towards getting to that point where you do have a healthy amount in your money goals column each month.

If all of your expenses together exceeds your income, that means you don’t have any extra money and you’re actually in the negative, which is a big red flag.

To make up the shortage, you’d have to tap into your savings or take on more and more debt. But the problem is, both of those “solutions” will eventually fail, once you drain all of your savings or stop qualifying for more credit.

To fix this problem, you’re gonna have to take on another job or reduce what you’re spending, even on your basic necessities. Heck, you might have to do both.

I know that can be tough to hear, but as much as that news might sting, consider that there are lots of other people with incredible comeback stories who were able to get their finances together and climb out of debt. So you aren’t alone, and if they could do it, so can you!

All it takes is one unexpected emergency or expense, and you could find yourself dangerously close to experiencing major financial hardship.

How to use a budget

Once you’ve got your spiffy new budget, it’s time to break it in. Any time you receive income or spend money, you’ll compare it to your budget.

The honest reality is that all spending is a trade-off. It’s just that our brains are too busy to really think about the ramifications of our decision every single time we spend. Subtracting the dollar amount from your money goals balance is a reminder that there’s definitely a trade-off happening, which helps you see the spending choice what it’s truly worth and not worth.

As for all that other spending that is budgeted for but simply turns out to be over or under, keeping track helps you see if you’re consistently budgeting too low or too high.

Although most people can pretty much use the same budget calendar and figures month after month, we recommend keeping your budgets in a binder so you clook back a few months and tweak things if you notice a pattern of being slightly off on your budget figures.

For anyone who has really variable income or very seasonal spending patterns, your budget binder will be especially helpful.

Conclusion

Learn how to create a monthly budget with our step-by-step budgeting tutorial. We’ll show you how to budget, all the key steps in the budgeting process, and our best budgeting tips and tricks to help you create a budget that sticks.

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