How to Make a Monthly Budget

1. Introduction: Hello, my name is Josh and I'm a business consultant for magnolias consulting based out of Saskatoon, Canada. And today I'm gonna teach you how to make your own personal monthly budget. Now, what is a personal monthly budget? It's basically just a financial document that's stating and listing your monthly expenses. And now you can approach this from a few different angles. Number one is what you are expecting to spend per month. Number two is what you would like to spend per month, and number three is what your projected the span. So it can either be actual goal or projected. But today I'm going to focus on creating monthly budget from a goal perspective. If you're trying to live within a certain amount of money, a certain budget. And I'm also going to provide some tips on how to save money and reduce expenses as well. While I go through it. 2. Starting the Budget: So just before we start the first lesson here, I do have other videos on how to make your own personal balance sheet and income statement. Those require a little bit more instruction. They're a little bit more formal. The personal budget doesn't require as much instruction, so I'm just going to jump right into the spreadsheet and go over a sample with you rather than explaining some of the formalities of the document. Okay, jumping right into the instruction here, I'm in a Google spreadsheet right now, but you can do this on paper. You can do it in a Microsoft Word document or a Google Doc, Microsoft Excel document, whatever you prefer. So let's start out by giving it a title. We'll call it monthly budget. The budget. And then at the top here, let's just call it Josh's monthly budget. You don't have to be super formal with this because it's just a document for personal use. So on the left here in the B column, this is where we write our items are expenses. And then on the right here could be in the E column is where we put the values per month. So let's start out with something like mortgage or rent. Because this for most people is going to be their biggest expense. On the left there you have the description. And then on the right here, let's put it in E column. Let's put the amount. So let's say e.g. $1,600. That's my monthly mortgage payment for this as far as money savings, That's a little bit harder to do. A mortgage is something that's more fixed, same with rent. If you're finding that your mortgage or your rent is too expensive, options are limited. You can downsize to something where rent or the mortgage payments are cheaper, maybe renegotiate your mortgage. Or what you can always can do is if you have extra space, you can potentially get a roommate so that you have a little bit of extra money coming in, even though it won't actually reduce your expenses. Secondly, maybe something like groceries would be one The higher expenses for most people. So again, we just write that on the left the description, and then on the right, the monthly value. This because this one is coal-based, we're looking at what we would like to be spending per month. So of course, this is going to vary a lot from person to person. As far as saving money on groceries. A lot of groceries have grocery stores have memberships where you can get points and bonus points for different things. And I find that it's actually pretty helpful for saving money. Beyond that, it just comes down to selection, just choosing items that are cheaper. And that depends where you live, like where I live. There are certain staple foods that you can rely on. Rice and potatoes and oats and things like that that are really cheap. Next item here on the left, we could do something like a phone bill. So maybe that's costing us, let's say $80 per month. Now, as far as tips for this one, I find a lot of people spend more than they need to on their phone bill and they should really shop around and check out some of the other phone providers because usually there are quite cheap plans and some budget plans that will provide them with what they need for a lower cost than what they are paying. The next thing would be something like internet. So maybe that's $50 per month. Again, shop around. Sometimes companies have better offers or promotions or something like that. Next would be something I want to point out and its bank fees. So I don't pay any bank fees. A lot of people do pay bank fees and I see them sometimes $15 per month. That's another thing you should shop around for. There are banks that have no banking fees, depending where you live, where I'm at in Canada, there are banks, I'm tangerine and simply financial that don't charge banking fees and often out promotions and referral codes and things like that. The next thing, maybe cable cable bill, maybe that's $50 a month. And again, just look for promotions. Look for companies that offer better prices on that. Another thing I want to point out here would be like interest on loans. If you have credit card debt or a line of credit or something like that, let's say you're paying $50 per month in interest. It's important to pay attention to resource allocation, money allocation. Do you have a bunch of money sitting in your savings account collecting no interests when you have credit card debt or line of credit debt. If you're doing that, you're basically paying interests, just have money in your savings account doing nothing. So it might be in your best interests to transfer that money from your savings or checking account to pay off your credit card debt or your line of credit, or another form of loan. Another thing here we can add to left would be like a car payment. For this, this is often a fixed payment as well as let's say it's $250 per month. So with that, that's kinda hard to control too. If it's too much for you, maybe downsize to a vehicle that's not as expensive. Maybe try and renegotiate the terms. Or if you have money sitting around in the savings or checking account, it might work out well to try and pay off that car payment, The car loan early so that you don't have those monthly payments or you're not incurring that extra interest. Another thing would be like a gym membership. So maybe that's $60 per month. Another thing, they're just kinda shop around. There are some gyms that are that have lower fees. Just kinda depends on what you're looking for. But I know at least where I live. There are some budget gyms that are ten, $15 a month compared to others that are more like 80. So it depends what you're looking for. Another thing would be like gas or fuel. That's another thing where it can be difficult, but it's no. And we'll say some people are spending $200 per month. That really depends on the type of vehicle you have and how much you're driving. So if you're trying to reduce that expense, obviously maybe get a vehicle that doesn't use as much gas. Find alternatives to driving carpool, or find ways to drive less. Carpooling can be one of them, but maybe you can walk to places. Maybe you don't need to drive as much as you think you do. Another one here would be like insurance. So you can add that. So you can see we have a pretty long list here going on the left of different monthly expenses. So insurance maybe that's health insurance. Maybe that's life insurance. Who knows? I can put maybe $60 a month for that. Again, that's another thing you just need to take a look at indeterminate if you need it. And if you do need it, are you getting the best price? Maybe you just need to shop around restaurants. So that can either be a separate section or you can kind of combine that with groceries or food. But let's say someone's paying $150 a month for that. My tip for that. Obviously, if you want to reduce how much you spend on restaurants, just cook for yourself more. Don't go to restaurants as much. But one thing that I really like to do when it comes to restaurants is designate one day per week, make it Wednesday or Thursday. That's restaurant day. And you don't go to restaurants outside of that, it allows you to be a little more disciplined and controlled. And I find that it's just something, it's more of a treat and it gives you something to look forward to. 3. Finishing the Budget: Just a few more ideas here to add for expenses, subscriptions. So everyone's gonna be a little bit different here, but just try and brainstorm and think of everything you might have for a monthly expense, you might have in some of these might charge you by weekly or every three-quarters. So you might want to make, or every quarter, every three months, you might want to make some adjustments to get the accurate monthly calculation. But let's say you have a few subscriptions, maybe $45 a month, for video viewing platforms, movie platforms, Music platforms. One way to save money. I mean, obviously take a look and see if you're actually using those enough to keep them. And if you are, There's often family plans that you can use to reduce your expenses if you have friends or family members that want them to and then you can share the cost. And also that reminds me for the gym membership. The same thing. Sometimes you get a family plan or family and friend plan to save money on that. Next one would be something like clothing or other expenses, entertainment, buying electronics, things like that. That can vary a lot, but let's say maybe $60 a month. The best tip I can give on this would be considered buying new stuff. I've actually bought a lot of use items, whether that's my phone, my ordering, badminton rackets, even for my business, my computer monitor, my webcam, my presenter remote, and my docking station. Those are all used items that I saved a lot of money on. So here's just a a decent example of what someone might have for their monthly expenses. Now quickly, if you want to do a little bit of formatting, we can do that. Merge these, make that centered centered title. You can bold it. One thing I like to do in Google Spreadsheets is remove the grid lines so I click on View, Show grid lines. Then maybe just, you can put a border around this. And at the bottom, you'll want to put the total so we can make a title here that says total. So that's your total monthly expenses. All you do is hit Equals. Write some, open the bracket and then highlight all the items there. And close the bracket and hit Enter. And maybe we can bold this. There you go. Just the basic monthly budget. You have the title. You have the list of expenses that you would expect to have on a monthly basis? On the left, on the right, all the amounts and at the bottom, just the total. So here we go. We have a total monthly budget of $3,170. 4. Reviewing the Budget: Okay, So here's a quick look at the final product. You've got your name, title at the top, your itemized list on the left here. And then you've got your totals on the right. And of course these are going to vary a lot from person to person. Just do your best to make sure that you have all your expenses included there and then your budget numbers. And again, this was a goal based budget. So you want to try and stick to these numbers. And the way you can do that is by just looking at your monthly expenses. What did you actually spend looking at your credit card or debit card, how much cash you spent on these bills and see if it's in alignment with what your budget was. Then lastly, there you just have the total at the bottom. It's a good way just to reflect on your spending and see if it's in alignment with what you hoped it was. Now one thing you actually can do here to see if you're actually spending how much you want to be spending is input the numbers for each month. So let's say December e.g. maybe your mortgage was $1,600, but for groceries only for 50 phone bill. Maybe you found a cheaper one for 60 Internet stay the same. Maybe you got rid of those bank fees. So you can take a look and see if your actual spending for a month is in alignment with what your goal monthly budget is. And you can check that every month just to see how close you're getting. 5. Class Project: Okay, so that's all for the instructional portion of the class. I hope that that was useful. I hope that the instructions on how to make a budget were useful and also the tips as well. For the class project. Obviously the project is to make your own personal monthly budget. And you can do that in a variety of different ways. You can write that down on paper. Take a picture submitted as a picture file. You can do it in a Word document file, a Google Doc, or you can do it in spreadsheet as well. Save it to PDF. It's up to you. And again, for this one, the idea was more gold based, like trying to follow a specific budget rather than actual or projected. It's for people that are trying to limit their spending. So yeah, for the class project, you can upload that. Just be mindful. I don't want anyone submitting any personal or sensitive financial information. So maybe before you submit it, especially if you're submitting it for public feedback. Maybe change the name and change some of the numbers in there just so you're not sharing anything that's too personal, private. I don't want that for the public to view. So basically just follow the guidelines in class. And also you can see the details in class details section. Basically just your itemized list of personal expenses that you're expected to spend for the month. And then you can upload that into the upload section. 6. Conclusion: So that's it for the class. I hope that was useful and I hope that that will be a useful personal financial management tool moving forward. Also, you can check out my other videos on my channel. I have a few other classes that have similar content. You can take a look at my Instagram, which is Meg noticed MAG NAL to us. And also take a look at my website where I have some free resources there with some additional information regarding some of the topics that I covered in this class.