Quicken Budget Features

Q: I wonder why this person says the budget features of Quicken don't work? I make use of them and find it works very well. Odd.

A: Plan your budget around your paydays. Break up your bills and expenses into 3 categories. 1.Personal Expenses This is your personal money for Food, gasoline, diapers, clothes, and other stuff that you buy at a store. 2.Recurring Monthly Expenses --Rent, Utilities, Phone, Car Insurance etc. This is stuff that you MUST pay off in full each month 3.Crappy Debt Expenses Money you spent and can't even remember what you spent it on. Money you'd rather spend somewhere else. Stuff that has a balance on it. When the balance is paid, you will have no further financial obligations. Once you've put everything in the correct category, you need to determine how much money you need to pay for each category. 1.Priority #1: Personal Expenses. This is the first priority because you have got to put food on the table. 2.Priority #2: Recurring Monthly Expenses. 3.Priority #3: Use the rest of the money to pay towards your debts. Use a spreadsheet to create your actual budget. 1.Create a different page for each month. Set your budget up for at least the next six months. 2.The bottom line should come out as close to ZERO as possible. 3.There's no way you can pay everything in one paycheck.. Make sure you have food on the table first. 4.As time goes by, and you pay down off certain debts, don't increase your personal spending. Instead, use the extra money to go towards other debts. 5.For starters, you should try to maintain your budget without getting too aggressive. Just make sure everything is getting paid at least once a month for now. 6.Any bonuses, pay raises, or refunds of any kind should be applied to debt. Keep your personal expenses the same until you have your debt paid down. Hopefully you have enough funds available to pay all of the minimum payments each month, but chances are that you probably don't. If this is the case, you need to contact your creditors and work out something to allow you to pay less and still pay on time. Ifyou can't work it out to pay all of your Crappy Debt bills, you should prioritize and pay the most important ones first. High priority ones are bills that charge late fees and report negatively to the credit bureaus. Some places don't charge late fees, like Past Due utilities, Dr. Offices, etc. Make them the lower priority and pay what you can. .

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