Reducing your essentials

The Envelope system is a way to track your variable expenses like food, entertainment, and drinks.

This method, preferably used weekly, allocates a certain amount in each category in labeled envelopes (food, drinks, movies, etc.). Once the envelope is empty, you are done spending in that category.

The principles that make a good budget, something you can stick to:

• Being Realistic: Being too strict is a recipe for failure.
• Making Adjustments: A budget is not set in stone, but a fluid thing.
• A Team Sport: If you live with a partner or spouse, you have to agree mutually on how to budget the financials.
• Expect the Unexpected: Keep an emergency fund, ideally 3-6 months of necessary expenses.
• Budgeting the Expected: Certain upcoming expenses need to be budgeted in advance, like property tax, holiday shopping, etc.

1. Gather Some Financial Information: gather a detailed list of your income and expenses.
2. Select a Budgeting Method: figure out how you’ll budget your money to meet your most pressing financial goals.
3. Create Your Budget: tally up all your expenses and income to see where you stand and allocate expenses.
4. Execute Your Plan: you can use a notebook, pen and paper, a spreadsheet or an online software.
5. Reward Yourself: you can work a small percentage into your budget to treat yourself each month.

This method suggests that you allocate 70 percent of your income to expenses, 20 percent to savings, and the remaining 10 percent to debt.

70:20:10 may work for someone with a healthy emergency fund and minimal debt.

There are a couple of paths you can take to pay off your high-interest debt when you're on a tight budget.

• The snowball method. For those who need to see progress, pay off the lowest balance first. You'll feel inspired to keep going.
• The avalanche method. Choose the debt with the highest interest rate to pay off first. This may require larger monthly payments and will take longer to see progress, but you will save the most money in the long run.
• If you need to prioritize your credit score, focus on paying down your credit cards first. Paying the ones you are near to maxing out will improve your score quickly by a few points.
• Set up payment plans, even if you can only afford a few dollars at a time. That way, your lenders can see you're paying something.

Financial professionals will advise you to cut out expensive nights out. In truth, you will have night's out, even when you're dirt poor.

To incorporate unplanned entertainment, set aside an amount each month. Be realistic. You can open another savings account for fun spending or you can use cash only.

• Needs: these are those bills that you absolutely must pay and are the things necessary for survival (rent or mortgage payments, car payments, groceries, insurance, health care, minimum debt payment, and utilities).
• Wants: these include all the things you spend money on that are not absolutely essential (dinner and movies out, vacations, electronic gadgets, etc.)
• Savings: this includes adding money to an emergency fund in a bank savings account, making IRA contributions to a mutual fund account, and investing in the stock market.

1. Determine how much you make on any given month.
2. List your bills: Once you determine how much money you'll make this month,  figure out how much money you need to spend next month.
3. Compare and contrast:  Once you see your monthly income and your monthly bills on paper, a clear picture of how much money is left over emerges.
4. Spend all of your money on paper: decide where that money will serve you best.
5. Track your spending.
6.  Make adjustments to get it right.

This becomes a problem when you’re spending for a life you can’t afford. It puts pressure on your budget and encourages you to live in a paycheck to paycheck cycle.

Assess your financial situation, cut back on your expenses, prioritize your money goals, and then come up with a new spending plan.

It’s hard to stick to a budget that doesn’t have a goal.

When there isn’t one, your budget becomes an afterthought rather than a spending plan to reach your financial goals.

1. Gather every financial statement you can (bank statements, investment accounts, recent utility bills).
2. Record all of your sources of income.
3. Create a list of monthly expenses.
4. Break expenses into 2 categories: fixed and variable.
5. Total your monthly income and monthly expenses.
6. Make adjustments to expenses: If you have accurately identified and listed all of your expenses, the ultimate goal would be to have your income and expense columns to be equal.

Assuming you're in your 20s or 30s and can earn an average investment return of five percent a year, you'll need to save about 20 percent of your income so you can reach financial independence when you're older.

Financial independence means that you can maintain your chosen lifestyle entirely from the interest of your investments and dividends.

The four percent rule states that you could withdraw four percent of your principal balance every year and live on this indefinitely. That means you need to save 25 times your annual expenses to become financially independent.

The four percent rule is not perfect. There is no risk-free investment that yields that much today. Sudden inflation could also cause a problem.