For those of you who started the new year with us in January you should be wrapping up your 30 days of expense tracking.  Now that you’ve done that it’s time to turn these numbers into a budget/spending plan!  Take the budget you started using estimated numbers and plug in the numbers based on what you REALLY spent, the goal at this point is to get that budget to balance.  Your income has to be greater than your expenses so…it may be time to get to trimming those expenses???  If you don’t like that idea the other option is to increase your income (and in some cases you may need to do both, at least for awhile).  No matter which side you want to attack it from the income MUST be more than the expenses.

Look at things that are automatically withdrawn from your account, do some price shopping for your auto and home insurance.  Another area that tends to get a little costly is tv…how much are YOU paying?  Is there a cheaper plan, I mean do you really need 250+ channels?  Is streaming an option?  The answer to these questions lie in just how much more your expenses are over your income.  For some, you have some room to “negotiate” and not make drastic changes, for others this is not up for discussion.  You are going to have to make some cuts no matter if it does mean cutting out the one and only tv show you watch each week! 

Make the sacrifices now, get yourself in better financial shape and you can always integrate the expenses back in.  Can I let you in on a little secret?  Most people I work with, once they cut an expense, rarely revert back to it!  They find the financial freedom far out weighs whatever it was they cut out.

If you have questions or need help with this, please don’t hesitate to reach out either by email (budgetwithcarla@gmail.com) or you can send a PM thru Facebook (Budgeting Basics-A journey to debt free living)

If you find that your expenses exceed your income and want help correcting this, contact me to schedule a Coaching Session ($25 gets a one hour, one on one session).  Together we will take a look and find solutions to get you to the next step toward paying off your debt and the ultimate goal of being debt free!