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I am in college. I have housing covered. I make about $150/week at my job.

I have to pay for groceries, my cell phone, and anything else I might want.

Can you help me plan my budget?

First of all break down the dates of when you will get paid and how much money you will have for that month.
Then put aside lets say $65 out of your monthly expected income.
Next calculate how much you usually spend on groceries and how many times a month you buy them.
Depending on when you will need to spend the money on grocery’s and your bill is when you would deduct that much from each weekly pay.

For example if you got paid on the first of the month and you phone bill isn’t due until the end of the month then wait until you last weeks check to pay that.
Also I would recommend budgeting out money for gas and a small amount into savings for emergency’s.

As for spending money, I would wait until right before you next check to spend whatever you have left over or just go by how much you have left over after calculating out your weekly necessary bill pay.

Budgets aren’t fun and they aren’t sexy. They are, however, completely necessary. Cheryl Porier, AKA Miss Download, takes a look at BankTree Personal Finance and loves how easy, intuitive and relatively painless it can be to track money coming in and money going out. A Internet video by butterscotch.com.

Duration : 0:3:34

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This site literally has step by step instructions.

http://www.ehow.com/how_9701_create-simple-budget.html

I need to find software to help make and stick with a budget. What is the best out there?

I used Quicken and it’s great. Takes a little bit of time to set up if you have a lot of accounts (I had over 30 so it took me a while) but once it’s up and running, you can update it periodically and you can spit out any type of report. You can "what if’s" and a variety of analyses. There’s a free 30 day version to see if you like it. Just go to the Quicken site and you can download it for free.

Finding Totals and Over Under in this free series of personal finance video from our professional Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

Expert: Tom Noah
Bio: Tom Noah has been a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for over 27 years.
Filmmaker: Drew Noah

Duration : 0:3:5

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I’m using MSMoney. It’s a great tool but time consuming. What has worked for you? How did you make it easy enough that the whole family was able to participate?
I make a very good salary and have a fantastic career, but still find that we are living paycheck to paycheck.
Any advice would be great.

In my opinion, a budget is worthless unless you have a practical way to actually implement it in real life. Here’s a good way to do it – after you do your budget and figure out how much you can spend each month after bills are paid, control your variable out-on-town spending (lunches, dinners, entertainment, coffees, groceries, gas, etc…) by getting a debit card account separate from your checking account. Load your budgeted amount for these categories at the beginning of the month, and then use the card. If you want/need to get more granular on your spending, you could get more than one card (neccessities vs. entertainment vs. blow (in Dave Ramsey-speak)). Don’t touch the money in your checking account that is not assigned to these expenses. At the end of the month, do you have money left? If not, why not? Keep this up for a few months and you’ll really start to see a difference in how you manage your spending – you’ll know where your money is going. The advantage of this to the cash method is that you have electronic records of your spending that you can access online. I heard about this system from a neighbor of mine and have been doing it myself. I got a prepaid card from Readydebit and it works for me. Hope this helps.

I tried MS Money but that is too complicated and not user-friendly (unless you’re a professional accountant)….

any recommendations?

I also use Excel. Way easier, and you can input your own formulas, if you know how to do that. Otherwise, you don’t have to use formulas at all.

Professional budget advice you can’t miss! Learn why most budgets fail and how to avoid mistakes in this free online video tutorial.

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I want to get better control of my money. How do I do up a budget and stick to it? Sticking to it is going to be the hardest parts. Any tips?

Try using mint.com as your base. It actually sends you emails when you go over your budget so being aware will help you stick to it. Also, record everything you spend and cut back as necessary at the end of the month. Don’t wait until the month is over to record your spending because you need to have a check point of where you are at any given time in your head so you know what’s okay to spend and what isn’t. This is how I got out of debt and it works.

I’ve always been good at saving, but now I’m saving for a down payment for a home and I’d like to get into the market as soon as possible to take advantage of the low rates. How do I save/budget faster and more efficiently??? Thanks!

I agree with Judy. I’ll just add a couple of things.

1. Quicken Personal is an excellent program, BUT only if you use it religiously. That is, you must enter all transactions and reconcile your checkbook each and every month.

2. There are some items such as home owner’s insurance or auto insurance which only send you a bill once or twice a year. You should accrue the expense. Let’s say the insurance is $1,200 per year. Set up the following recurring monthly journal entry:

Insurance expense___$100.
___Accrued Insurance payable $100.

When you write the check, take the charge (debit) against the accrued insurance payable.

Other expenses are unexpected. For example a pipe bursts and you have to call a plumber. Therefore you need to put money aside for these unexpected items. Go back 24 months in your check register. Write down each and every unexpected item. Add them up and then divide the total by 24. Make the follow recurring journal entry in Quicken:

Unexpected expenses ___________$xxx
____Accrued unexpected expenses payable_____$100.

When you pay an unexpected bill, charge the accrued unexpected expenses payable.