Basic principles of budgeting. How to properly manage a personal budget: basic principles and expert advice

Many families try to manage all expenses and income at once, but 95% of the time you will fail. If you haven’t done this before, then after a couple of weeks your brain will get lazy and you will start to forget and skip.

Some people try, of course, powerful analysis and summation tools will come to help you, but you often have to spend a lot of time to turn it on, write it down, so in a notebook, it’s much faster and always with you. Also, by doing everything manually, you will better remember your family budget.
You have written down and taken into account everything, but there are no changes in your life. Happens. Accounting in itself is meaningless; it must be aimed at something. Just ask yourself a few questions:

What do you want to know when you use accounting?

What is not clear?

What assumptions do you have that you would like to test?

Answer them and you will have an accounting system.
Once you have asked yourself what you want to find out, ask yourself if you are spending too much on things like movies, coffee, etc. Will I be able to afford rest and study if I give up everything unnecessary? How much money do I spend on various fixed costs, like utility bills, etc.
Analyzing data on the required issue within 2-3 weeks, you will find out the exact figures of the expenses you are interested in.

Do you have a sheet of paper with all the numbers in front of you, but still nothing is moving? The answer is simple - it is not always necessary to know all the numbers. You can immediately do what you think is necessary and correct, while organizing your accounting on the go. If the decision is large and not obvious in terms of benefits, make an accounting, and if you already know everything you want, act without unnecessary numbers.

Planning is a magical tool.

He will help you learn everything about expenses and a lot about yourself. Make friends with money. But for this purpose, the budget should not be a routine. Treat the numbers in your budget like a riddle and once you solve it, you will discover a new life full of joy and happiness!

If you have any questions regarding family budget planning– feel free to ask them in the comments (see below on this page)! I will answer all questions and share my experience.

If you don't want to waste your time looking for a program to run home accounting, then I can offer my table in which I keep my budget.

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§ 2. Principles budget system Russian Federation

The principles of the budget system of the Russian Federation are the basic, initial provisions, operating rules for everything budget device Russia as a federal state. Principles are the fundamental ideas on which the structure of the entire budget system is based. The list of principles of the budget system is determined by Art. 28 BC RF. Let us reveal their main content.

The principle of unity of the budget system means the unity of the budget legislation of the Russian Federation, the principles of organization and functioning of the budget system of the Russian Federation, forms of budget documentation and reporting, budget classification of the budget system of the Russian Federation, sanctions for violation of the budget legislation of the Russian Federation, a unified procedure for establishing and fulfilling expenditure obligations, generating income and making expenses budgets of the budget system of the Russian Federation, maintaining budget accounting and reporting of budgets of the budget system of the Russian Federation and budgetary institutions(Article 29 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation).

The principle of separating income, expenses and sources of financing budget deficits between the budgets of the budget system of the Russian Federation means assigning, in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, income, expenses and sources of financing budget deficits to the budgets of the budget system of the Russian Federation, as well as determining the powers of bodies state power(local government bodies) and management bodies of state extra-budgetary funds for the formation of revenues, budgets, sources of financing budget deficits and the establishment and execution of expenditure obligations of public legal entities.

State authorities (local self-government bodies) and management bodies of state extra-budgetary funds do not have the right to impose on legal entities and individuals financial and other obligations not provided for by the legislation of the Russian Federation to ensure the fulfillment of their powers (Article 30 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation).

The principle of budget independence means:

1) the right and obligation of state authorities and local self-government bodies to independently ensure the balance of the relevant budgets and the efficiency of use budget funds;

2) the right and obligation of state authorities and local governments to independently carry out the budget process, with the exception of cases provided for by the Budget Code of the Russian Federation;

3) the right of state authorities and local governments to establish, in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation on taxes and fees, taxes and fees, the income from which is subject to credit to the relevant budgets of the budget system of the Russian Federation;

4) the right of state authorities and local self-government bodies, in accordance with the Budget Code of the Russian Federation, to independently determine the forms and directions of spending budget funds (with the exception of expenses, the financial support of which is carried out through interbudgetary subsidies and subventions from other budgets of the budget system of the Russian Federation);

5) the inadmissibility of introducing changes in the budget legislation of the Russian Federation and (or) legislation on taxes and fees, legislation on other obligatory payments, leading to an increase in expenses and (or) a decrease in the income of others, during the current financial year by state authorities and local self-government bodies budgets of the budget system of the Russian Federation, without amending the laws (decisions) on the relevant budgets, providing for compensation for increased expenses and decreased income;

6) the inadmissibility of the withdrawal of additional income, savings on budget expenditures obtained as a result of the effective execution of budgets, etc. (Article 31 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation).

The principle of completeness of reflection of income, expenses and sources of financing budget deficits means that all income, expenses and sources of financing budget deficits in mandatory and are fully reflected in the relevant budgets (Article 32 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation).

The principle of budget balance means that the volume of budgeted expenses must correspond to the total volume of budget revenues and receipts from sources of financing its deficit, reduced by the amount of payments from the budget associated with sources of financing the budget deficit and changes in balances in accounts for accounting for budget funds. When drawing up, approving and executing the budget, authorized bodies must proceed from the need to minimize the size of the budget deficit (Article 33 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation).

The principle of effectiveness and efficiency in the use of budget funds means that when drawing up and executing budgets, participants in the budget process, within the budgetary powers established by them, must proceed from the need to achieve specified results using the least amount of funds or achieve the best result using the amount of funds determined by the budget (Article 34 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation).

The principle of general (total) coverage of budget expenses means that budget expenditures cannot be linked to certain budget revenues and sources of financing the budget deficit, unless otherwise provided by the law (decision) on the budget in terms of:

1) subventions and subsidies received from other budgets of the budget system of the Russian Federation;

2) funds from targeted foreign loans (borrowings);

3) voluntary contributions, donations, self-taxation funds of citizens;

4) budget expenditures carried out in accordance with international treaties (agreements) with the participation of the Russian Federation;

5) budget expenditures carried out outside the territory of the Russian Federation;

6) certain types of non-tax revenues proposed for introduction (reflection in the budget) starting from the next financial year (Article 35 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation).

The principle of transparency (openness) means:

1) mandatory publication in the media of approved budgets and reports on their implementation, completeness of information on the progress of budget execution, as well as the availability of other information about budgets by decision of legislative (representative) bodies of state power, representative bodies of municipalities;

2) mandatory openness to society and the media of draft budgets submitted to legislative (representative) bodies of state power (representative bodies of municipalities), procedures for consideration and decision-making on draft budgets, including on issues that cause disagreement either within the legislative (representative) body of state power (representative body of the municipality), or between the legislative (representative) body of state power (representative body of the municipality) and the executive body of state power (local administration);

3) stability and (or) continuity of the budget classification of the Russian Federation, as well as ensuring comparability of budget indicators for the reporting, current and next financial year (next financial year and planning period).

Secret articles can only be approved as part of federal budget(Article 36 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation).

Principle of equality budgetary rights subjects of the Russian Federation, municipalities means that the determination of the budgetary powers of state authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and local governments, the establishment and execution of expenditure obligations, the formation of tax and non-tax revenues of the budgets of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and local budgets, the determination of the volume, forms and procedure for the provision of interbudgetary transfers are made in accordance with unified principles and requirements determined by the Book Code of the Russian Federation.

Treaties and agreements between state authorities of the Russian Federation and state authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, state authorities and local government bodies that do not comply with the Budget Code of the Russian Federation are invalid.

Several new principles of the budget system should be separately highlighted.

The principle of jurisdiction of budget expenditures means that recipients of budget funds have the right to receive budget allocations and limits on budget obligations only from the main manager (administrator) of budget funds under whose jurisdiction they are.

The main managers (managers) of budget funds do not have the right to distribute budget allocations and limits of budget obligations to managers and recipients of budget funds not included in the list of managers and recipients of budget funds subordinate to them in accordance with Art. 158 BC RF.

The manager and recipient of budget funds may be included in the list of subordinate managers and recipients of budget funds of only one main manager of budget funds.

The jurisdiction of the recipient of budget funds to the main manager (manager) of budget funds arises by virtue of the law, regulatory legal act The President of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation, the highest executive body of state power of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation, local administration (Article 38.1 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation).

The principle of cash unity means crediting all cash receipts and making all cash payments from a single budget account, with the exception of operations for the execution of budgets, to single budget accounts.

The principle of budget reliability means that the reliability of forecast indicators for the socio-economic development of the relevant territory and the realistic calculation of budget revenues and expenditures must be ensured.

The principle of targeting and targeted nature of budget funds means that budget allocations and limits budget obligations communicated to specific recipients of budget funds indicating the purpose of their use.

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Today, a huge amount of literature has been written on the topic of competent budgeting, many training courses have been created, and various trainings and seminars are held. But, unfortunately, not everyone has the time (and money) to study the relevant materials and courses. And agree, how nice it would be if you could just read one article that would briefly, competently and laconically outline the basic principles of management and control personal finance? We hasten to congratulate you - this is exactly the article in front of you! And believe me, after reading it, managing your personal budget will become much easier for you.

A few words about the budget

So what is a budget? A budget is a document (electronic or paper) in which all items of income and expenses for a specific period of time are regularly visually and in detail displayed, i.e. all sources of inflow of funds, all expenses, as well as any individual rules for managing finances and a personal financial plan for the future. To a person who has never been seriously involved in budgeting, at first glance this may seem like a complicated process, requiring some special knowledge or skills, a huge amount of time, etc. In fact, there is nothing difficult about this for the simple reason that it is just a skill that you just need to master. Budgeting includes several basic parts, which are supplemented with others over time, acquiring the features of a more complex system. But you always need to start with the simplest. The main components of maintaining a personal budget are:

• Accounting for income and expenses
• Cost optimization
• Planning income and expenses

Remember that you need to manage your budget in exactly this order, because... each subsequent point is a logical continuation of the previous one. Let's consider each of them separately.

Accounting for income and expenses

Income accounting is necessary so that, firstly, you clearly know where every penny comes from in your wallet, and secondly, what specific amount is yours monthly income. Since a year consists of 12 months, and the source of income for the vast majority of people is wage, then we will continue to take one month for a “specific time period”.

But if the situation with income is quite simple: received - recorded, received - recorded, etc., then with expenses the situation is somewhat different.

As already mentioned, 20% of the income of many people who do not manage their budget “disappears.” Moreover, this happens even in cases where it seems that you know exactly what you are spending your money on. And this amount could be used wisely: spent on something significant and truly necessary, or postponed. You can “return” this money, but until you know where it “disappears”, you will not be able to do this. This is the first reason why you need to keep track of expenses. And you need to do this every day.

Get yourself a separate notebook and always carry it with you. To begin with, spend money in your usual way, as you are used to. But be sure to record all your expenses, even if it is 7.5 rubles for a cake or 2 rubles for a box of matches. Divide the sheets of the expense notebook into two parts - “purchase name” and “amount”. Place dates at the top of the sheets. Don't categorize your purchases - this is unnecessary now, just write them down, because... your main task is to develop such a habit and determine the reason for the “disappearance” of money. You shouldn’t hope for this either, because... the very next day you will diligently remember what you spent on.

Check the remaining money against your notes weekly to check that your entries are accurate and systematic, and to see if there is anything on your list that you could give up without causing significant harm to yourself. You might be surprised to learn that such things exist. At the end of the month, count all such expenses and determine them total amount– this is how you get the desired result, i.e. Finally, you will find out where one fifth of all your money is regularly spent. Now you can henceforth refrain from such expenses and direct the “found” money in another direction.

In addition, regular entries in a notebook after each purchase will automatically force you to think about the feasibility of the purchase, which means you will approach your expenses more consciously. After 2-3 months of this practice, having already gotten used to it, you can divide your expenses into categories (food, transportation, public utilities, entertainment, etc.).

Cost optimization

Cost optimization implies rational use of funds. And this is by no means saving money. Saving is the abandonment of what is pleasant, familiar and enjoyable in favor of what is necessary in order to save money. Optimization is the competent distribution of personal financial flows across all items of one’s expenses without the need to deny oneself anything essential. You may have to give up something, but it will be so insignificant that, in fact, it will not even be felt. Cost optimization is based on following principles which are very important to understand:

• There are no expense items that are not important to you. To spend less, you should reduce each item in proportion to each other, i.e. deduct funds from each item in the same percentage.
• The most optimized items are those expense items that require greatest number funds from your budget, because their costs can most likely be reduced.
• There is no need to strive to purchase things advertised as economical, or to purchase in bulk. The human psyche is structured in such a way that due to the apparent cheapness or supposed discount, he will unconsciously strive to take more, which means that he will spend more.

Once you know exactly your basic and real needs and determine how best to optimize expenses, you can begin distributing funds according to goals and time periods. For example, after receiving your salary, set aside some of the money for basic expenses ( obligatory payments), leave the other part (even if very small) as savings, and divide the remaining amount into the four weeks that make up the month. Separate these four parts from each other, placing them, for example, in envelopes. Open each new envelope only on the eve of the coming week. The less money in each of these envelopes, the more disciplined and rational you will be in your spending. And one more helpful advice: the more prone you are to thoughtless purchases, the less money It is recommended to have it with you throughout the day.

The above practice is actually very effective. If you stick to it for at least six months, you will learn to maintain decent amounts money, and you will also develop the habit of spending money only on what is really necessary, while not only not worsening, but also improving the quality of your life.

Financial planning

Anything is an essential component of success in any area of ​​life, because... allows you not only to divide the process into several important stages, but also to see new opportunities. Financial planning is the key to material well-being, the presence of a “safety cushion” in unforeseen life situations, the opportunity to achieve many material goals, and even become a financially independent person.

Financial (and any other) plans are usually divided into short-term (up to 1 year), medium-term (from 1 to 3 years) and long-term (from 3 years or more). Accordingly, you need to plan incrementally. Firstly, achieving goals is a step-by-step process in which the implementation of medium- or long-term plans may depend on short-term or medium-term ones. And, secondly, there is always a certain threshold that we cannot overcome at present. In addition, there are some circumstances that cannot be influenced (inflation, sudden layoffs at work, unforeseen necessary expenses, etc.).

To be able to be prepared, if not for everything, then for a lot, you need to have a clear idea of ​​what you will do in a given situation, as well as develop your strategy for achieving your goals. All this includes financial planning.

The best time to get your budget and planning in order is at the beginning of the year. But, of course, there is no need to wait for its onset. Get down to business right away: define your goals, calculate your actions, look for new opportunities and options. This will be your first step towards prosperity and financial well-being.

In conclusion, I would just like to add that you should always remember that a competent attitude towards your budget should become part of your lifestyle, an incentive for professional, career and personal growth; a skill that will make wealth your faithful companion and guarantor of confidence in any life situation. All successful, wealthy and financially independent people talk about this. And to become one of them, you need to finally take care of your personal budget. And we wish you speedy success and good luck in this!

Do you know any other effective ways maintaining a personal budget? We welcome your recommendations, advice and comments!

Family finances can be compared to building a house. The foundation of the house is the formation of the family budget, the walls of the house are the formation reserve fund families, the roof of a house, these are investments in profitable assets, so to speak, a foundation for the future. Attempts to change the order of building your finances are simply guaranteed to lead to failure. When forming a family budget, the income item should be greater than the expense item. You ask: how much? At least 10%. You can’t live 100%, you should always have money left to form your reserve fund, and also, if possible, to invest in the future.

Any adult knows that money does not grow on trees, it must be earned. Most people cope quite well with the issue of making money, but few achieve wealth. What is the reason? Family budget consists of two main items: income and expenses. If you don't know how to manage your money wisely, then no matter how much you earn, you will still not have enough money.

The first step to financial prosperity is maintaining your family budget. You need to know exactly how much you earn and how much you spend and on what. To manage the family budget, I made a small program in Excel . It allows you to control your expenses and income. The program table is made on one printed sheet and allows you to clearly see your expenses and income. I don't think it's worth using more complex programs, everything ingenious is always simple.

The most common mistake when managing a family budget is the absence of a responsible person for certain expenses. Money is piled up in one pile and everyone takes as much as they see fit and spends it on what they see fit. Money is spent chaotically, which is almost guaranteed to lead to financial problems. If you decide to combine family finances, then each family member should be assigned certain expense items. The envelope method is well suited for accounting finances. For each expense item, one envelope is allocated, which contains a pre-agreed amount. Only the person who is responsible for this expense item takes money from the envelope. The money put in the envelope should be enough for a month. If you do not want to combine your family's finances, then everyone can keep track of their finances separately. The principle of maintaining a family and personal budget is the same. With this method of maintaining a family budget, you can use the same program I wrote. At the end of the month, you can bring together your personal budgets to decide how much and what the family spends on as a whole. In any case, the family budget must be drawn up with a surplus, that is, income must exceed expenses. After forming your family budget, you can begin to create your own reserve fund. The size of the reserve fund should range from three to twelve monthly expenditure budgets. Once you have formed your emergency fund, you can move on to investments.

The second common mistake when managing a family budget is the principle: “I take it all on myself.” One of the family members begins to dominate, switching everything financial flows to myself. It is not right. Every adult in the family has the right to spend money, and children must be taught to spend wisely Money. It is necessary to decide at the family council who will spend the family funds and on what. For example, someone is responsible for utility bills, someone takes care of food costs, someone takes care of clothes and shoes for the whole family. Each family is unique in its own way, so you must decide for yourself how to distribute your expenses. Accordingly, income will need to be divided. If your child is old enough, he needs to be taught how to handle money. It will be necessary to allocate him small amounts, and give responsibilities, such as buying bread and other groceries. That is, the child will also be responsible for fulfilling some items of your family budget.

The third, fairly common mistake is: “Everything at once.” As soon as a person has money, he wants to make all his dreams come true at once. It is not right. Money must be spent as planned. For these purposes, a family budget and a personal financial plan are drawn up, which sets out the main goals and the time frame for achieving them. Program for compiling personal financial plan can be downloaded at the bottom of the page. The program is quite simple, just fill out the cells and receive the amount of monthly contributions to achieve your goals. Convenient enough.

Family budget is the most important component when planning your expenses and income. It should be carried out, and at the same time, in case of unforeseen circumstances, funds for its implementation are taken from the reserve fund. If serious changes have occurred in your life, you need to reconsider your family budget and investment goals and make the necessary adjustments. You should not carry out the plan at any cost; soberly assess the situation and make timely adjustments. We are given life only once; we shouldn’t complicate it in pursuit of an extra million. The accumulated funds are unnecessary for the deceased, so in life you need to adhere to the principle of moderation.

Rokin Alexey

If you suddenly still don’t understand why you need budgeting, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with our previous materials on this topic:

By presenting the idea very briefly, maintaining a budget allows you to answer the question “Where can I get money?”. Almost everyone asks themselves this question, but those who don’t financial planning and does not keep a budget, unfortunately, in 99% of cases they simply turn to banks for consumer loans. This is an easy path, but it leads to big problems. As we described in the materials above, the actions of a financially literate person are fundamentally different. And the main tool of analysis and planning for him is the budget. In addition to answering the question “where to get the money?”, the budget also solves other important problems. For example, for most people, before they get an answer to the question “where to get the money?”, they must answer themselves another intermediate question - “where does the money go?” It is the budget that allows you to determine how you can optimize costs and understand where you can save without harm. The above would already be quite enough to start budgeting. But, in addition, a personal budget opens up other opportunities. Financial planning should be based on realistic forecasts and solve money problems not “in general”, but provide understandable and clear time frames. For example, it is important to answer questions such as “when can a family afford to buy new apartment?", "When can I retire?", "How long can I afford to look for new job?”, “How many times a year can we go on vacation?” and so on.

Moreover, when the budget becomes , and the money saved has already appeared, we are starting to solve qualitatively different problems. A person faces other questions that a budget helps answer: “how to manage your savings?”, “how to increase income?”, “what type of activity is the most profitable?” Accounting for expenses and income, and most importantly, competent data analysis will help answer these and many other questions.

In general, in addition to solving specific problems, maintaining a budget is the first step that allows you to take control of your personal finances and stop “following” people’s lead. own money. It is also important that budgeting itself is quite an interesting activity and after some time of getting used to it turns into an exciting pastime. From consideration of this phenomenon we will move on to practical recommendations, for which this material is planned.

Many people, after spending several months tracking expenses and income, become so carried away by the process that they forget why it is being done. The budget itself has no value if it does not solve the problems described above. The result of record keeping should be important data that should be analyzed regularly. Based on this analysis, specific informed decisions are made.

How to start keeping records

Step 1

We always have to start somewhere... The easiest way to do this is to remember where we keep our money. In fact, the money may not be stored, but almost everyone has a wallet where this money regularly or at least sometimes ends up. Therefore, the first entry in the list of places to store money will be “cash”. Someone will end there, and another will continue, writing, for example, “deposit in Sberbank”, salary card and so on. In personal finance accounting software, this step is called “creating accounts.” Indeed, modern people keep less and less money in cash and more and more in bank accounts. It's obvious that credit cards should also be recorded in the accounts, the only difference is that the balance on them will be negative. Another type of account can be considered debt. We can borrow money from someone or vice versa - lend it. We advise you to create two accounts at once: “they owe me” and “I owe”. Now, if we gave someone 10,000 rubles. into debt, then we simply transfer this amount from the “cash” account to the “owe me” account. This is convenient because... we will not forget to whom and when we lent, and the money will remain included in the budget. When recording accounts, it is useful to indicate in which currency the accounts are maintained. For example, in one bank there may be two deposits - ruble and dollar, then you should write down two accounts and reflect the type of currency in the name.

Step 2

Create your own list of expense and income categories. If accounts allow you to simply understand where this or that amount is, then categories make it possible to figure out what the money is spent on and where it comes from. Many programs offer a ready-made list of expense and income categories. But we still recommend making your own, because... Everyone has their own situation and there is no universal list. You can use someone else's list of categories as a guide to create your own by adding, removing, or modifying categories. Below is a typical list:

• Income
  • Salary
  • Bank deposits
  • Scholarship
  • Pension
• Expenses
  • Car (repair, maintenance, wash)
  • Charity
  • Banking services
  • Hygiene (hairdressing, cosmetics, personal care products, etc.)
  • Apartment (housing and communal services, electricity)
  • Medicine
  • Unforeseen
  • Catering (eating out)
  • Clothes, shoes, accessories
  • Present
  • Travel (vacation, weekend trips, etc.)
  • Help for relatives
  • Products
  • Entertainment (restaurants, cinema, etc.)
  • Communication (Internet, mobile phones)
  • Sport
  • Transport (gasoline, public transport)

We draw your attention to the “unforeseen” category of expenses. It is difficult to categorize all types of expenses, and for some types of expenses it is simply not practical to create a category if such expenses occur infrequently and in small amounts. In this case, the expense is included in the “unforeseen” category. At the same time, all errors in record keeping fall into this category, if any occur (and most likely, it will not be possible to avoid them completely).

Step 3

Then you just need to start keeping track of expenses and income. The action of spending funds, receiving them or transferring them between accounts is also called a transaction. Each transaction must correspond to a specific account, amount of money, expense/income category or transfer (if money is transferred between your accounts). Many programs also allow you to enter notes for each transaction. They can be useful for subsequent analysis.

How to keep records

All the steps described above can be done different ways. You can write everything down in a notebook the old fashioned way, you can make a simple table in Excel and fill it out, or you can use a ready-made financial accounting program. It is difficult to recommend a notebook for record keeping, because... There are obvious difficulties in subsequent analysis and calculations, and recording expenses will not be very convenient. Things are a little better with spreadsheets. Microsoft independently produces ready-made templates () where you can enter invoices, categories, and expenses. Excel provides almost unlimited possibilities for calculations and analysis, but the daily entry of expenses itself is inconvenient simply due to the features of the program interface. Therefore, we recommend using ready-made financial accounting programs, which can now be found to suit every taste. In addition to ease of use, the programs are also good because they allow you to take into account not only the main categories, but also enter an unlimited number of subcategories. For example, the category “transport” may have subcategories “gasoline”, “metro”, “trains”, etc. Some programs allow you to automatically enter expenses for bank accounts, automatically save a copy of your data on the Internet, which virtually eliminates the possibility of losing it. A lot of modern projects have versions for smartphones on different platforms. Thus, you will always have a tool for accounting and planning with you. There are projects that allow you to manage a budget together with other family members (multi-user mode). Almost all of them have built-in analysis tools, although the capabilities in this area vary significantly from project to project.

With an overview of the most interesting among existing paid and free projects on accounting for personal and family finances can be found in our separate material Review of projects on personal finance accounting, dedicated to this topic.

Creating a Budget

As a rule, after taking into account expenses and income for one to two months, the main trends quickly become clear: the main categories in which funds are spent are determined, it becomes clear where savings can be made, and where, on the contrary, funding can be increased. This data allows you to begin financial planning, which is based on a budget. Creating your first budget is quite simple. Just look at how much you spent on average in each category and plan for the next month how much you want to spend on each of them. The same needs to be done with income categories. If your total projected income exceeds your future expenses, congratulations, you have created a surplus budget. Although you can budget for almost any period of time, we recommend monthly budgets.

Data analysis

Data analysis is central to the personal finance accounting process. To begin with, it is useful for yourself to understand how to reduce your expenses without compromising your standard of living. To do this, we recommend dividing the expense categories into two parts: vital and non-essential. Traditionally, vital things include medicine, food, rent, etc. Secondary expenses include expenses for restaurants, books, trips, vacations, etc. Saving costs on minor categories, especially if it is insignificant (5-10%), as a rule, generally occurs unnoticed by current level life. Another important type of analysis is to look at the size of the budget surplus (or deficit). It is important to understand whether the surplus is increasing or decreasing over time, and whether the deficit is decreasing or increasing. What are the main reasons for the change? Does a surplus allow you to achieve financial goals on time, or is it better to reconsider the deadlines, and perhaps the goals themselves? Data analysis happens naturally every time we compile new budget. At the same time, we recommend summing up the overall results annually. This type of analysis provides a more complete picture.

IN Lately It is becoming popular to keep track of investments and savings simultaneously in the same program along with the budget. In our opinion, personal finance accounting programs do not yet provide necessary tools for proper accounting and analysis of investment results. Investment accounting differs from cost accounting and budgeting in that it does not require the daily entry of new data. In this regard, interface requirements fade into the background, but the ability to analyze investment results, on the contrary, is a complex and multifaceted task.

Family approach

If a person has not yet started a family, then he needs to negotiate about “life in a new way” only with himself. This is not easy, but things are much more complicated when there are two or more in the family. Actually, the husband and wife have to negotiate. If one of them is categorically against the budget approach, which sometimes brings into use such expressions as “saving”, “let’s wait to buy until...”, “let’s postpone the trip...”, then one will have a lot to cope with accounting and planning more difficult. We can say that for families this is “Step 0”, followed by everything described above. Every family has a different situation, but one thing is obvious: the sooner people try to come to an agreement (maybe before the wedding), the easier it is to do it. Of course, it will seem to us that by inviting a girl to bring order to our joint finances and start saving money, we will remain a petty and stingy person in her eyes. But this is where it is important that people do not lose understanding among themselves. After all, behind financial planning there is not stinginess, but concern for the future of the family. From experience we can say that joint accounting and planning significantly help the development of mutual understanding, trust and family relationships in general.