There are so many options out there for creating your own budget – programs you can download, books you can buy etc.
A lot of these are costly, complicated and confusing. The whole idea can already be daunting, so here is a great way to do it quickly and easily. Gail Vaz-Oxlade has a super simple way to create your budget.
It’s free, easy to read and understand, you don’t need anything to get started. 6 quick steps and you’re on your way!
And I love her tips on how to improve it, get your costs lowered, earn a bit more money and so on. It’s all very true, you can easily phone your utilities and ask for discounts, if there’s any special promotions and you’ll be surprised at how many bills you can get lowered. Once you have all your bills listed you can figure out which ones to call for a discount. And check your local area for special programs too – Manitoba Hydro has a lot of options. There are all types of Power Smart savings and loans, you can retire an old fridge and get $40, and they will even send you a kit with water and heat saving equipment, like a low flow shower head etc. It’s a very nice kit.
Another big one to reconsider is groceries and household products – you can easily lower those by watching for sales, stocking up on your favourites when you find them on clearance, ordering meat at the butchers in bulk, following store promotions, and of course using coupons 🙂
What are your tips for making a budget? And ways to lower the costs once they’re all listed? Any other good programs out there for lowering costs?
Nadine, looking for frugal ideas cooking financing, budgets I can highly recomend Mr CBB “the Canadian Budget Binder” great stuff on there. People on there are fantastic at sharing there ideas on how to get the finances in order and has tools to get your budget to actually work!
I think one really important aspect of budgeting is to remember that the first budget you make isn’t going to be perfect, especially if you really have no idea what you’ve spending your money on. You might decide to only spend $100/month on gas, but then realize that in order to get to work/school you actually need $250. The first 3-6 months will be the time for tweaking everything, so don’t get discouraged!!
That is a great tip!
After I joined Weight Watchers, I found that making a weekly dinner menu on a dry erase board helps because you make your shopping list based on that. Always shop with a list and never buy what’s not ON the list (that’s why we check the flyers). I track everything we spend which makes it easy to see where you are over-spending and cut back there.