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Yesterday I talked about budgeting with a monthly budget, but that can be hard if you are living paycheck to paycheck. If you are in that position right now do not feel bad because almost 70% of American employees are in that situation. In order to get out of paycheck to paycheck living you will have to start managing your money better.
The weekly budget is a tool that will allow you to get a grasp on your money without having to plan the whole month. Once again I will refer you over to Joe Sangl’s tools page because this is the best pre-made form I could find. Download the Weekly Budget Form and fill it out in a very similar fashion to the Monthly Budget Form. The major difference is you go week by week. So if you are paid weekly or every other week you just fill in the pay you received by week like this:
The form automatically fills in the totals at the top. When you have money left over the total is yellow. If you go over the money in your paycheck it turns red. And when you spend all your money to zero it turns green (this being the goal). As you can see it is very much like the monthly budget but you are spending each paycheck (or if you have more than one income, paychecks) on paper as you get it. This allows you to pay bills as they come in. So if you have a bunch of bills at the beginning or middle of the month you can devote the majority of that paycheck to paying bills and use the other to pay for food and fun. This usually means the first month will be a little tight but once you make it through the initial adjustment stage things get easier and easier. This will allow you to start saving money and figure out where the overspending is occurring.
This budget will work for almost anyone but in the financial groups that I talk to the question of irregular income always comes up. I worked on full commission for a while and it did make budgeting a lot harder but there are ways to stabilize the feast and famine lifestyle that many irregular income earners experience. I will explore what we found to be the best option tomorrow.