budgeting and finance Archives

the money talk

It’s that time of the year again. Time to draw up a new budget and decide on some goals for the coming year. DH and I recently sat down and had THE TALK. What our financial priorities will be for 2011. Dealing with stark financial realities is never fun. Budgeting and goal setting can be [...]

what is your dream life costing you?

Every now and then I see something that makes me wonder what I’m missing. There seems to be a secret understanding that everyone else gets, and I’m out of the loop. An understanding that you can buy your way to happiness. You see, I watched a video recently by Frank Kern, a popular internet marketing [...]

what’s the trend? Understanding your finances with graphs

When it comes to budgeting and spending less, there are good months and there are bad. Some months you nail your budget or even exceed expectations, and others you will fall off the wagon. But if your aim is to reduce your expenses (or in the case below, a particular expense), what is the overall [...]

budgeting for irregular income

Getting by on an irregular income is all about managing cash flow. When the cash flows in, you need to manage it in a way that there is enough to cover the months when the cash isn’t flowing in so freely

tutorial: tracking your savings goals using excel

While these days you can have multiple savings accounts without incurring extra fees, it’s often easier to keep all your savings in one account. But if you’re working towards a variety of savings goals, how do you keep track of your progress towards each goal? I like to use an excel spreadsheet to allocate various [...]

Tutorial: Building A Basic Budget In Excel (For The Absolute Excel Beginners) Part 2

Part Tow of creating a basic budget in Excel from scratch for absolute beginners.

Tutorial: Building A Basic Budget In Excel (For The Absolute Excel Beginners) Part 1

If you’ve never opened excel but want to create a budget using it, then I’ve written this tutorial for you.

Printable Household Expenses Sheets to Download

To make tracking expenses easier, I’ve created some printable household expense worksheets that you can download and use for free.

Preparing The Household Budget For 2010

It’s that time of the year for creating a new budget for next year. There is endless potential in a blank spreadsheet, all of the spending sins of the last 12 months wiped clear.

Charting Your Progress – Creating Graphs In Excel

If you are using Excel to keep a budget and want to add a graph but don’t know how, then this tutorial will show you how. Instructions are for Excel 2007, but all the options are available to create a chart under the Insert menu in previous versions. I have been keeping my budget in [...]