A budget is the foundation of a solid personal finance strategy. It is the plan that tells your money what you want it to do. Without a budget, you flounder financially. With a budget, every dollar that you make has a job that you assign. Budgets are not limiting or restrictive because you decide how the money is allocated. However, budgets do reveal to you exactly how you’re spending or wasting your money which many of us do not want to face. Creating a budget is a necessity if you want to succeed with money.
The ultimate guide to personal finance budgeting.
Originally, I was going to write an article about how to put together a budget. However, as I thought about it, I realized that I could never cover all the important aspects in just one article. Besides, there were already a lot of great articles already written about personal finance budgets. Instead, I decided to assemble this ultimate list of budgeting resources.
It doesn’t matter whether you are just getting started creating a budget or if you are a budgeting pro. You are sure to find some interesting, practical and useful advice below.
Why you need a budget
If you are aren’t even sure you need a budget to succeed with money, then this is where you need to start reading. Below you will find explanations for why budgeting is crucial to getting ahead with your finances.
1. A Budget Controls Your Money Like A Dam Controls A River
2. Things I Learned Living on a Budget – Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3
4. Creating Our First Ever “Real” Budget Was An Eyeopener
5. Turning Around Your Financial Life (Part 2 of the story)
6. Lessons from Grandma’s Cookie Jar
8. Top reasons people don’t budget
9. 10 Surprising Side Effects to Money Management
10. Realistic Budgeting- The Marriage Saver
11. Why Not Budgeting is More Frightening than Budgeting
12. The Scare of My Life, and Why Budgeting is Important
13. Having A Plan Allows Me To Enjoy Spending Money
How to create and maintain a budget
This is where the rubber meets the road in budgeting. These articles will give you detailed information for creating and maintaining a personal finance budget. Together these articles form a definitive guide to putting together a budget.
14. How to Implement an Envelope Budgeting System
15. Envelope Budget System Strategies To Take On the Road
16. Getting started with the envelope budget method
17. Keep Your Spending Tidy With an Envelope System
18. Budgeting For Dummies Part 1- Creating a Budget
19. Budgeting for Dummies Part 2- Evaluating Your Budget
20. Budgeting for Dummies Part 3- A Budget You Can Stick To
21. How To Realistically and Thoughtfully Increase A Budget Item
22. Create and follow a Budget
23. Zero-Based Budgets for the Home- A Primer
24. Making Every Penny Count With A Zero-Based Budget
25. Family Finances- Our Modus Operandi
26. The Budget Toolbox- 13 Tools for Building a Better Budget
28. Your budget- envelopes or a plan?
29. Budgeting 101- How a Simple Budget Helped Me – And Can Help You, Too
30. Guide to Budgeting & Tracking Money For Newlyweds
31. Budgeting For Two- Newlyweds Edition
32. Fixing your money mistakes- Create a budget
Tips and Tricks for living on a budget
Adjusting to living on a budget will take you outside your comfort zone. You will have plenty of questions about how to handle specific situations. Therefore, I have provided you with lots of great articles that cover a plethora of budgeting dilemmas.
34. How to Handle Irregular Paychecks
35. The Readers Ask- “How Do You Budget With an Irregular Income?”
36. How Do You Handle Unexpected Expenses?
37. Could Your Family Live On One Income?
38. 9 Tips For Going To One Income
39. How To Avoid Buying Things You Do Not Need!
40. How do you deal with a budget deficit?
41. 10 Ways to Eat Out For Less
42. 3 Tips on Eating Out for Five but Paying for Only One
43. Make Grocery Budgeting A Game, The Price Is Right Style
44. How to work expensive ingredients into your grocery budget
46. Winning the Daily Cash Flow Battle
47. 22 Money Maximizing Moves You Can Do Today
48. 34 Ways To Save Money On Car Expenses
49. How To Frugally Decorate Your House On A Very Tight Budget
50. How Low Can It Go? Shopping for Style on a Budget
51. how much do i need to earn? reverse engineering my ideal salary
52. Preparing a Budget- Ten Tips for Making That Budget Successful
53. Vacation Budgeting Hack – Don’t Forget About Tips!
54. 13 Free or Cheap Ways To Keep Your Home Cool This Summer
55. Are You Throwing Money Away? Unused Expenses and Untapped Discounts
56. Key strategies to a successful budget
57. Three Ways Falling in Love is Good For Your Budget
Budgeting mistakes to avoid
This section is the troubleshooting part of the guide. Why make the same mistakes that others have already made? By reading these articles, you can learn to avoid the most common pitfalls of personal finance budgeting.
59. 10 Mistakes I Made As A First Time Home Buyer
62. Don’t Make the Fatal Flaw in Budgeting
63. Money Mistake Monday – Watching Every Last Penny Syndrome
65. If You Get Your Paycheck A Few Weeks Early – Be Careful!
66. Intentionally spend your money
Budgeting software to consider
Every remodel job is easier to complete successfully with the right set of tools. There is a wide-range of personal finance software available to help you track and refine your budget. The reviews and information below will help you pick the package that fits your specific needs.
67. My New Personal Finance Software- YNAB Pro Reviewed
68. Mint.com Money Management Software Review
69. Mint- A Fresh New On-Line Personal Finance Tool
70. Mint Review – How Secure is it?
71. Mvelopes Personal Finance Software Review
72. Get Out Of Debt- PearBudget Spreadsheet Hacks
73. PearBudget- An Effective Way to Dip Your Toes into Budgeting
74. A Free and Simple Budget Planner
75. Free Budgeting Tools to Download
76. An Introduction to Quicken Online
79. My Personal Excel Budget Spreadsheet
A budget will get you on your financial feet fast!
A good budget is a critical step toward financial peace and you will not find a finer collection of articles on personal finance budgeting anywhere! These articles are practical and simple. Anyone can benefit from their advice. Do not delay! The sooner you get started the sooner you will reap the rewards!
Photo by Jeff Keen
What a fabulous list of resources! I use a very detailed budget for our family. It’s nice because you can catch a category of overspending quickly before it gets out of control.
Our budget is a combination of MS Money and a home grown Excel spreadsheet.
Read My Dollar Plan´s lastest article – My Emergency Cash Back Card: American Express Blue Cash
Wow, great set of tools for regular people. Thanks for including some of my ideas, I appreciate it. Now to go check the rest of them out!
Thanks so much for including many of my articles in this list! This is a great resource you’ve put together!
Wow, this took quite a lot of time to put together! Thanks for including some of my posts, Jeff!
Read Ron@TheWisdomJournal´s lastest article – 10 Debt Collection DON’TS
@MDP – A good budget will certainly help you catch those areas where you tend to spend too much.
@David – I do hope that “regular” people will benefit from these resources. I feel strongly that a good budget is key to succeeding financially.
@paidtwice – Thanks for writing fantastic articles for me to include here!
@Ron – It did take a little time to put this together, but it will be worth it if it helps just one family get control of their finances before it is too late.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and comments!
GREAT GREAT GREAT!!! I have a personal finance blog, and I still need to review some of your great tools!
Awesome list of really useful tools! Some of those tools are on this list too, but it’s tailored to recent college grads… 37 Tools You Need To Successfully Manage Young Money
Fantastic list!!!! This is going to be a great help to many readers, I’m sure! I think I could stand to learn from some of these links, too.
Thanks for including my posts!
Read Lynnae´s lastest article – I’m Back from Walmart Headquarters!
Wow! What a list!
You not only gave great sources but grouped them into appropriate categories. Thanks so much.
Read Flora Morris Brown, Ph.D.´s lastest article – It’s Been Wa-a-a-y Too Serious Around Here Lately
Fantastic lists. Lots of great info. Maybe I can finally balance MY budget.
Wow, what a list…all helpful too!!
Read Susan´s lastest article – Get a Free Bluetooth Headset
Nice list Jeff, and a particularly timely one for those of us who are thinking of tightening the belt.
Read Peter | The Change Blog´s lastest article – The Way of Retreat: How To Get Promoted Without Doing Anything
great list. thanks for sharing.
Read PT´s lastest article – Poverty in the United States – Blog Action Day 2008
I’ve added this site to my “must-read” list. Thanks for putting these resources together.
@Angelsong – I’m glad you find this to be a useful resource. I hope many others are able to benefit as well!
Thanks for letting me know!
Great list! Thanks for including me!
Read Aaron Stroud´s lastest article – A letter to a friend
Great list! Thanks for the mention
Read That One Caveman´s lastest article – Get Professional Services For Free By Bartering
You should check out Fortora Fresh Finance, it’s a great personal finance manager/budgeting tool. Super simple to use, and best of all it’s available for Mac and Windows. http://www.fortora.com
Wow! What an amazing amount of information!
If anyone is using the cash only envelope system for saving money and weaning off of credit cards – check out http://www.crunchycute.com. There are several really great and unique cash envelopes systems there.
Another website to consider is NeoBudget (www.neobudget.com). It is an online envelope-based budget management system with lots of great features to help track your budget. I would categorize it as a mid-level budget solution. It’s not completely dumbed-down, but it doesn’t require an accounting degree to use.
Read Luke´s lastest article – Ignore your checking account balance
Wow, wow, wow. Thank you so much for this enormous list of resources!
My life is so much easier after starting and maintaining a budget.
Read Jason from Money Theory´s latest article – Rhapsody To Go vs. iTunes
Our budget is the same! Money and a homemade spreadsheet. Works great for us.
Read Nicki at Domestic Cents´s latest article – Good Reads: I Love Tea
Love this list of links. Thanks for sharing mine.
Read PT Money´s latest article – 10 Free iPhone Apps to Help You Make the Most of Your Money
Amazing list! I wish I had found this sooner. Better late than never I guess.
.-= Eric´s last blog ..You Need A Budget Pro – Personal Finance Software Program updated Tue Jan 12 2010 11:48 pm CST =-.
Great list, I’m with luke neobudget is another great resource with its envelope based budget mgmt.
.-= IamDavid´s last blog ..Love & Money: How To Keep It From Blowing Up =-.
Great post, seems that you are able to offer alot of insight into the topic. Thanks
.-= Make Online Online´s last blog ..Is Getting a Payday Loan a Good Idea =-.
Great set of resources. Budgeting is ultra important. I just hope people do not get overwhelmed by what you offer, but use some of it.
.-= Ben´s last blog ..The Two Acocunt Simple Budget System =-.
Looks like some great resources to help me start budgeting
Thanks!
.-= Matt Czarnek´s last blog ..How would ‘YouCut’ the National Budget =-.
Great list of resources here! Its also helpful to give yourself a weekly cash allowance. This helps you accurately keep track of your spending (and saving.)
Brilliant suggestions indeed! Budgeting it is the key word when it comes to getting out of debt! And it doesn’t need to be burden!
Nice suggestions! I always say focus more on your spending rather than trying to increase your earnings as you have greater control over those aspects.
Hi! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with SEO?
I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not
seeing very good results. If you know of any please share.
Thank you!
Carol´s last [type] ..Carol
Yeah, Will do – I’ll put them on this month, when I get some time.
best loans on the market´s last [type] ..best loans on the market