Budgeting lies at the foundation of every financial plan.

It doesnt matter if youre living paycheck to paycheck or earning six-figures a year, you need to know where your money is going if you want to have a handle on your finances. Unlike what you might believe, budgeting isnt all about restricting what you spend money on and cutting out all the fun in your life. Its really about understanding how much money you have, where it goes, and then planning how to best allocate those funds. Heres everything you need to help you create and maintain a budget. 1. Budgeting Basics Do you know why a budget is so important? On the surface it seems like creating a budget is just a tedious financial exercise, especially if you feel your finances are already in good order. But you might be surprised at just how valuable a budget can be. A good budget can help keep your spending on track and even uncover some hidden cash flow problems that might free up even more money to put toward your other financial goals. Ads Financial ManagementImprove security of financial data w/ a financial management software.www.gurango.com/Financial Home budget softwareFinances in a mess? Need to get on course? Download Budget now!www.snowmintcs.com Budgeting Made EasyEffortlessly organize your finances Get immediate control!www.budgetmap.com 2. How to Create a Budget The hardest part of creating a budget is sitting down and actually creating one. Its like staring at a blank piece of paper when you need to write something and that first step seems like a massive hurdle. Dont worry--Ive broken down the budget creation process into a few easy to follow steps. Youll be able to sit down and create a basic budget in just a few minutes. 3. 3 Traits for Budgeting Success Once youre taken the time to create a budget, now its time to make sure you follow it. Budgeting can be like going on a dietyou start with good intentions, but after a few weeks or months you drift away from your plan. Dont let that happen to you. Here are a few basic traits that will ensure budgeting success. 4. Basic Budget Worksheet

If youre having difficulty coming up with all of the various expense categories for your budget, Ive created a budget worksheet that can help you organize everything. This worksheet has the most common expenses and can help you keep track of everything in an orderly fashion. 5. How Overspending Breaks Your Budget The main reason to create a budget is to help you keep your finances under control by keeping track of how much money youre spending and where it goes. When you begin to stray from your budget its usually because of spending too much money somewhere. But if you have a budget that tells you exactly how much youre supposed to spend, why is it so easy to overspend? There are a number of reasons we overspend, so when you understand what causes overspending, you can help put a stop to it and keep your budget on track. 6. Try Using Cash to Keep Spending Under Control Swiping plastic has become incredibly easy. With both credit cards and debit cards, we can be in and out with a purchase in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, this convenience comes at a cost. By using plastic we can begin to lose track of how much money is actually being spent. Sure, two dollars here, 4 dollars there, it doesnt seem like much at the time of purchase, but if you arent careful they can really add up and bust your budget. One trick to help keep your daily spending under control is to use cash instead of your credit or debit cards. It might not be as fast, but it helps you visualize just how much money youre actually spending.

Finance is often defined simply as the management of money or funds management. [1] Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created for transacting and trading assets, liabilities, and risks. Finance is conceptualized, structured, and regulated by a complex system of power relations within political economies across state and global markets. Finance is both art (e.g. product development) and science (e.g. measurement), although these activities increasingly converge through the intense technical and institutional focus on measuring and hedging risk-return relationships that underlie shareholder value. Networks of financial businesses exist to create, negotiate, market, and trade in evermore-complex financial products and services for their own as well as their clients accounts. Financial performance measures assess the efficiency and profitability of investments, the safety of debtors claims against assets, and the likelihood that derivative instruments will protect investors against a variety of market risks. [2] The financial system consists of public and private interests and the markets that serve them. It provides capital from individual and institutional investors who transfer

money directly and through intermediaries (e.g. banks, insurance companies, brokerage and fund management firms) to other individuals, firms, and governments that acquire resources and transact business. With the expectation of reaping profits, investors fund credit in the forms of (1) debt capital (e.g. corporate and government notes and bonds, mortgage securities and other credit instruments), (2) equity capital (e.g. listed and unlisted company shares), and (3) the derivative products of a wide variety of capital investments including debt and equity securities, property, commodities, and insurance products. Although closely related, the disciplines of economics and finance are distinctive. The economy is a social institution that organizes a societys production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, all of which must be financed. Economists make a number of abstract assumptions for purposes of their analyses and predictions. They generally regard financial markets that function for the financial system as an efficient mechanism. In practice, however, emerging research is demonstrating that such assumptions are unreliable. Instead, financial markets are subject to human error and emotion. [3] New research discloses the mischaracterization of investment safety and measures of financial products and markets so complex that their effects, especially under conditions of uncertainty, are impossible to predict. The study of finance is subsumed under economics as finance economics, but the scope, speed, power relations and practices of the financial system can uplift or cripple whole economies and the wellbeing of households, businesses and governing bodies within themsometimes in a single day. Three overarching divisions exist within the academic discipline of finance and its related practices: 1) personal finance: the finances of individuals and families concerning household income and expenses, credit and debt management, saving and investing, and income security in later life, 2) corporate finance: the finances of forprofit organizations including corporations, trusts, partnerships and other entities, and 3) public finance: the financial affairs of domestic and international governments and other public entities.[4] [5] Areas of study within (and the interactions among) these three levels affect all dimensions of social life: politics, taxes, art, religion, housing, health care, poverty and wealth, consumption, sports, transportation, labor force participation, media, and education. While each has a vast accumulated literature of its own, the effects of macro and micro level financing that mold and impact these and other domains of human and societal life typically have been treated by researchers as policy, welfare, work, stratification, and so forth, or have been largely unexplored. Recent research in "behavioral finance" is promising, albeit a relative newcomer, to the existing body of financial research that focuses primarily on measurement. Loans have become increasingly packaged for resale, meaning that an investor buys the loan (debt) from a bank or directly from a corporation. Bonds are debt instruments sold to investors for organizations such as companies, governments or charities.[6] The investor can then hold the debt and collect the interest or sell the debt on a secondary market. Banks are the main facilitators of funding through the provision of credit,

although private equity, mutual funds, hedge funds, and other organizations have become important as they invest in various forms of debt. Financial assets, known as investments, are financially managed with careful attention to financial risk management to control financial risk. Financial instruments allow many forms of securitized assets to be traded on securities exchanges such as stock exchanges, including debt such as bonds as well as equity in publicly traded corporations. Central banks, such as the Federal Reserve System banks in the United States and Bank of England in the United Kingdom, are strong players in public finance, acting as lenders of last resort as well as strong influences on monetary and credit conditions in the economy.[7] An entity whose income exceeds its expenditure can lend or invest the excess income. On the other hand, an entity whose income is less than its expenditure can raise capital by borrowing or selling equity claims, decreasing its expenses, or increasing its income. The lender can find a borrower, a financial intermediary such as a bank, or buy notes or bonds in the bond market. The lender receives interest, the borrower pays a higher interest than the lender receives, and the financial intermediary earns the difference for arranging the loan. A bank aggregates the activities of many borrowers and lenders. A bank accepts deposits from lenders, on which it pays interest. The bank then lends these deposits to borrowers. Banks allow borrowers and lenders, of different sizes, to coordinate their activity. Finance is used by individuals (personal finance), by governments (public finance), by businesses (corporate finance) and by a wide variety of other organizations, including schools and non-profit organizations. In general, the goals of each of the above activities are achieved through the use of appropriate financial instruments and methodologies, with consideration to their institutional setting. Finance is one of the most important aspects of business management and includes decisions related to the use and acquisition of funds for the enterprise. In corporate finance, a company's capital structure is the total mix of financing methods it uses to raise funds. One method is debt financing, which includes bank loans and bond sales. Another method is equity financing - the sale of stock by a company to investors, the original shareholders of a share. Ownership of a share gives the shareholder certain contractual rights and powers, which typically include the right to receive declared dividends and to vote the proxy on important matters (e.g., board elections). The owners of both bonds and stock, may be institutional investors financial institutions such as investment banks and pension funds or private individuals, called private investors or retail investors.