Budgeting
by Philip Scott
Budget.
I find that most people DONT!!!
Why is that, and what does it have to do with SYSTEMS?
You should know by now that I am a master finding relationships between things that have no apparent relationships ... sometimes more to amuse myself than anything else. My dad used to say he talks to himself because he enjoys intelligent conversation.
Your budget is very important to your business as well as your personal finances. We always hear the experts tell us that we need to set goals. A budget does exactly that, it is simply a financial goal!
Sure, go ahead and say My goal is to have a million dollars in my bank account by the end of 2011. Excellent goal, but how will you achieve it? And how do you know if it is realistic?
This is where systems come in. You need a SYSTEM that will help you achieve this.And as luck would have it, I have just the right solutions for you!
STEP 1:
You need some software to help you project your budget. Im sure you have a copy of Excel, or have a Google account and use the online spreadsheet tools and youre pretty good at doing spreadsheets, but there is an EXCELLENT tool on the market called Simply Budgets.
Simply Budgets makes childs play of projecting your cash-flow in your home or business. Simply input your expected income and expenditures, whether they be regular or one off, weekly, monthly, annually (and everything in between) and instantly produce graphs to show you where you will be in a month, a year, 5 years if you wish!
The beauty of Simply Budgets for my lies in the fact that it saves you time, is super easy to use, and handles those irregular financial items with class.
Its up to you. Use Excel spreadsheets or some complicated accounting package help you budget and manage your cash-flow ... or save yourself time and lots of money and use something like www.simplybudgets.com.au. Its good. I use it!
STEP 2:
Get yourself a SAbona myBlitz rewards card!
myBlitz is a rewards card company that provides a rewards card on steroids!(great opportunities for you as a business, gain extra business from it, seewww.myblitz.com.au. The SAbona membership card is a myBlitz card, branded with a South African flag so you can show off your heritage. And we throw in lots of extra benefits for SBN members, but the card itself is a great budgeting tool too. Once youve figured out how much you need to earn and what your maximum expenses can be (using Simply Budgets!) you can use the SAbona myBlitz card to help you manage your expenses!
If your budget allows you to spend say $300 a week, you transfer $300 a week to your card (yes it has a bank account attached to it), and you use it to buy whatever it is you need to spend your money on. This may be your office expenses or your groceries. This way you know you cant spend more than you should!
You can check on any smart phone what your balance is, so you are never left guessing! There are even tools allowing you to restrict what you can spend the money on to help you with your budgetingcash-flow.
Of course if you use the card to purchase from any of a rapidly growing list of rewards partners, you end up EXTENDING your spending power! E.g. you may spend $100 with a rewards partner that offers a 20% rebate. You may have budgeted for the $100, so now you end up with an EXTRA $20 that you were going to have. Not sure about you, but I like that!
Its a great system :)
Home