(ThePennyWatcher.com) – Having a clear idea of your finances and budgeting properly is very important, and you will never really reach your goals unless you can organize exactly what you have incoming and outgoing financially.
There are more than enough apps and tools on the market today that are so easy to setup, and before you know it you can have all of your accounts organized in one central dashboard.
Start by tracking your spending. You don’t need a manual process here. All you need to do is tryout one of the suggested applications and you can see a daily breakdown of all spending.
Set realistic goals. You can even setup automated saving withdrawals so you won’t ever have to think about it. Start small, and work your way up to a higher amount as you make more income.
Make a budget. Once you have a handle on what your income and expenses are, you can now setup a realistic budget.
And stick to it! This is most likely the hardest part, but it’s important to stick to your budget as much as possible. Be disciplined and stay the course!
Here are some resources and applications as mentioned:
Intuit
Mint:
You may have heard of MINT as they have been around for awhile, but they were recently re-structured into Credit Carma’s brand, so take a look and test it out. It has many of the same features but re-imagined a bit.
YNAB
You Need a Budget (YNAB):
YNAB is an industry leader, and has some features that you may align with that others do not.
Ramsey Solutions
EveryDollar:
Dave Ramsey’s show produced an application called the EveryDollar and its a free budgeting app that is based on the envelope budgeting system.
www.personalcapital.com
The Balance: The Balance is a personal finance website that has a wealth of information on budgeting, saving, and investing. Some of these apps put alot of resources into educational aspects alongside their platform, this is one of them.
Reuters
The NerdWallet: The NerdWallet is another personal finance website that has a lot of information on budgeting, saving, and investing.
Make sure to test more than one, as they each have different look and feel and differ in what type of customer they are looking for.
Cheers to your financial health!
