Budget Ideas And Free Personal Budget Sheet

Q: First of all, let me thank everyone who responded to my post about roach control. I really enjoyed the advice. I was wondering if you guys could help me one more time. I am wanting to start a home budget but I don't truly know where to start. When I searched on the net I didn't find much of anything, so what I was wondering was if anyone knew of any websites that gave out advice on budgets? Also does anyone have any books they can recommend?

A: You might try the Motley Fool message boards, they have a board for budgeting. I also tried a book called The Budget Kit, but my categories were so different from theirs it wasn't much good. I found that 90% of my expenses fit into 2 or 3 of their categories, and the rest were blank. My personal budget has separate categories for books, computers, eating out, etc. while most budgets just lump all of that under "entertainment". If you have a more "typical" budget (i.e. family, mortgage, kids) then it might work better for you. The best thing for me was Quicken, it's very easy to set up a budget within Quicken, and even if you don't track it down to the last penny, it gives you a general idea if you are going over budget with color coded graphs. I keep my budget monitor open all the time so I see it first thing when I open Quicken. .

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