Home economics. Personal finance management. How to manage your home budget

Home economics is especially interesting for those who just broke away from the care of their parents and went to free bread. And if earlier the father and mother took care of this, now the young man has to do it. Here is management of personal finances and will be considered in the framework of this article.

general information

Home economics means solving the arising economic and personal issues and problems at the expense of available resources. Priority is the physiological needs of man - water, food and sleep. After that, it is necessary to decide the question of comfort - what to dress to not freeze, and where to live. This is the minimum basis that must be solved in order to exist peacefully. Of course, you can also raise questions about rest, self-realization, self-development and many other things, but for now we will concentrate on food, sleep, water and clothes.

So that the body was strong, you need the right and high-quality food. Also, suitable water is required. All this must be supported by financial investments. Home economy with this almost never experiences problems, because to earn it is still not problematic. In extreme cases, you can farm and grow food for yourself. But still we are interested in what to buy it directly. In order to save personal finances, one should be interested in places where fairs are held, where you can buy potatoes, cabbage, corn and other land products grown on the ground by the same farmers. In addition, a high concentration of sellers and buying directly from manufacturers contribute to the fact that it becomes possible to spend less money. Thanks to this, you save your home budget.

First steps

But how is the home economy optimally organized? Here, planning, optimization and saving have a big impact. We are very often like to nod to the American millionaires. It's only from the attention of most people that the fact that states are formed by hard work and frugality floats away. The majority of millionaires in the first generation are people who put money back on their pension and became rich only at adulthood. Therefore, before you manage personal finance, you need to take a few first steps:

1. Form the management of the family budget. It is necessary to get acquainted with the main methods of managing all means, to consider the pros and cons and to ensure that this process is not tedious and burdensome.
2. Pay special attention to incomes and expenditures, which fall on the family budget. And it is very desirable to break them into categories in order to streamline the accounting process.
3. It is best to have a detailed idea of where the money is being spent. To do this, you need to document all expenses. Of course, it's not necessary to do this all your life, but you can live in this mode for several months to have a general idea. And it is possible that the understanding will come that there are too many money in any positions.

This is especially true in the first three months of independent life.

Planning, composition and optimization

So, now needs to organize home accounting. The family budget, alas, often does not forgive miscalculations, and this must be approached with all responsibility. Initially, it is necessary to analyze the cash flows that a person or a cell of a society receives. After this, it is necessary to do the planning. Here we need to identify short-term and long-term prospects. The first include the solution of problems that are now and will not go anywhere. So, it is necessary to pay utility bills, food, transportation expenses. It's all necessary to take into account and necessarily display in the short term the family budget. This will build a balanced budget that will meet basic needs. And what about the long-term perspective? This should be attributed to who has the desire to become. So, if there is a goal to turn into an entrepreneur with multimillion-dollar incomes, then you need to take care of the basis. In other words, it is necessary to provide that some personal finances go to a certain deposit account in a bank or to a mattress, for subsequent extraction at the right time, when the start of a new life is given. In order to assess your strength, you can initially create three types of budgets: optimistic, realistic and pessimistic, and then assess what is best obtained and act already within the tools used previously. Although you can use the triple approach in the future, if you consider that it is necessary and effective.

On what to make a bet in terms of an assistant?

You can save data in a notebook (barn book) or computer (PDA or smartphone). What to choose? The first option is best to use only in cases where electronics are not available due to certain reasons. In this case, it is enough to draw three graphs: income, expenses, total. The first two are necessary to reflect the operations that were carried out, and the third - to reconcile the data. Concerning electronics, it can be said that it is necessary for more convenient recording of expenses and subsequent work with them (although here to whom as). We will not dwell on this in detail, but we will only pay attention to a few of the most useful functions:

1. Report generation. Extremely useful and important function. The computer allows you to quickly process the available data and submit a report in order to later successfully analyze it. And based on the information received, you can make successful decisions.
2. Presence of several types of accounts. It is very convenient, that it is possible to allocate separately the deposit in the bank, the family budget, Mutual Funds and other working moments.
3. Planning. Allows you to make estimated costs and future payments, so you can simulate the situation, which will be after a certain time.
4. Calculation of interest on loans and deposits. What to say - a very pleasant and motivating thing.
5. Control over debts. To accurately reflect the financial cases, you can record here those who borrowed something. This function will not let you forget who received the money and who gave it to you.
6. Data protection. All information in the program can be protected from unnecessary eyes with a reliable password.

Help of software (software)

Many are interested in how to conduct a home budget in a notebook. A sample of this approach, although it deserves respect, but still has its drawbacks, and indeed, it is morally outdated. Although the notebook allows you to make data less whimsical, but it's better to stock up with more ergonomic software. This approach is more convenient, and it will easily become a habit due to its comfort. We recommend to pay attention to such software:

1. "Home finance."
2. "The Jade." Not the most functional, but simple and without extra frills program.
3. "Home Economics." Pleasant software that allows you to conveniently carry out calculations.
4. "Family budget".
5. "Home accounting". Multifunctional program with a lot of different settings.
6. AceMoney.
7. Family. Excellent program, one of the best (some quietly assign it number 1) of those that are presented on the Internet. It is advisable to use later versions, because the former had quite a lot of software problems.
8. MoneyTracker. A multifunctional and convenient program that can be used for both the family budget and personal finance.

Another program that should be mentioned as one of the program options is Microsoft Office as Excel (or similar). The advantage of this approach is that information about all the expenses and similar can be viewed both on stationary devices like personal computers and laptops, and on mobile tablets and smartphones.

How to save money?

Well, an important point is the optimization of costs. In our reality, utilities spend up to 2/5 of all funds. It should also be noted that tariffs are growing by 15-20 percent per year, which can not but be sad. Therefore, you need to think about how to minimize the size of payments. If to speak about the winter period, then installation of counters and warming of apartments / houses helps a lot. In addition, you can monitor your health so that you do not have to spend significant money on drugs in the future. If you wish and the opportunity, you can see the car / public transport on the bike. Thus, it will be both savings and health benefits.

Separately, marketing is in the home economy. It is aimed at identifying needs and their satisfaction. Therefore, before going to the stores and recommend to make lists of necessary products, so as not to spray their financial resources on something unnecessary. After all, it's no secret that professional marketers know how to be very good at brainwashing, and you should go to the store for bread, as you come out with a whole heap of packages. Therefore, it is important to keep your head clear and not succumb to manipulation. Very good in this helps the system of priorities. If there is not enough will for this, then define the goals and objectives of the home economy and always keep them within the "step" availability. This will facilitate the process of self-discipline.

About the man leading the budget, say a word

Initially, it is necessary to determine who will monitor the money and spending it. We need to discuss the specifics of the process of their distribution. It is important to note the type of budget: joint or separate. In order to achieve mutual understanding and avoid conflicts, it is necessary to learn how to deal with money competently. To this end, the partner in charge of the budget must understand the importance of planning and be able to make informed decisions. In order to maximize the effectiveness of the measures taken, care should be taken to draw a clear structure of revenues with expenditures. This is necessary in order to understand how expediently the money is spent. Maintaining a family budget, where only one person, is quite easy. But if their two - it requires a certain skill. Initially, it will be difficult to count money, but within a month or two, after the result is enviable, it will not seem so burdensome.

Creating Your Budget

So, you need to evaluate how much you can expect. Best of all, if during such an operation rely on the data of last year. Thanks to this, it will be possible to have an approximate basis for spending. After all, if the budget is compiled for the first time and there are no truthful data, then it may turn out that very much is not taken into account, and expenditures were underestimated. True, it is necessary to make amendments taking into account inflation. Since the official data published by the government does not have faith, then as a reference point, one can take the percentage value of the increase in utility bills. Such elements of the domestic economy will make it possible to adopt a family budget close to reality. Also, you do not need to choose the absolutely optimal way of development, you should make sure that there are various sudden expenses. This may be the need for treatment, and pocket money for children, and a banal desire for sweet, when everything is bad and you need to somehow solace yourself. True, more than five percent of this case should not be allocated. Some of this can be used and a little differently. Consider the situation when parents give pocket money to children. You can not limit this, but go the other way. Here, for example, one small option. Children are given a certain amount once a month, which they can spend at their own discretion. Let's say that there are three hundred rubles, although you can stop at a thousand. This is not regulated in any way, but at the same time there will be no support anymore. That is, if the child spends all the money at once - well, he himself decided, no sweet, toys and other things until the end of the month. Later he will think about what to do with the funds allocated to him, and learn how to handle money carefully, build his own budget.

Keeping records of income / expenses

Suppose that electronics are used for this purpose. How to calculate the home budget in this case? An important advantage of software is that there is an extensive classification of spending. So, you can write down how much went to transportation, food, recreation and entertainment, medicine, communal. Depending on the functionality, even a record of what and how much was purchased, for example, three frozen for twenty-five rubles, can be available. Thus, you can very carefully check your spending and make an appropriate decision that will help to conduct activities more sparingly.

Let's consider a small example. There is an opportunity to take a sandwich from the house, which costs twenty rubles, or buy a bun at work for fifty. The difference is like a small one, but for a month - five hundred rubles. Much too much, but not too much? Then for a year - six thousand rubles. Almost the minimum monthly pension. And this is for one year! On one bun! It's amazing, right? And if you carefully and scrupulously calculate your spending, you will come to understand that moderately changing your regime of life, you can significantly save. One more example? Let's imagine a small town for 70 thousand people. The fare for a fixed-route taxi is 10 rubles. A day is spent 20. Let's say that a person goes to work only 20 days a month. Total - 400. For the year - 4800. You can buy a good, high-quality and reliable sports bike, which will pay off in 3-5 years. On it, having acquired the proper skill, you can safely accelerate to 100 kilometers per hour (although we do not forget about the limit of 60 km / h) and get to the place of work faster than a minibus. And here the health benefits that a cyclist will receive are not taken into account. And is it worth saying that they are not afraid of traffic jams?

Conclusion

In order to have an idea of the areas of your own life that can be improved, you must first make a thorough and detailed analysis of spending. Based on these data, you can make the best possible plan for its accuracy. And then financial management will be easier. It's one thing to hear from someone that you can provide for your life. Quite different is to calculate that you can save and invest, let's say, for eight years so much money that in the future you can live without hunchbacking somewhere in unloved work, and doing what you like. And to achieve such a wonderful, exciting and necessary goal will have to work well. Perhaps, it is necessary to combine several places of work, but believe me, it's worth it. After all, what can be more beautiful than the opportunity to decide for yourself what will free time be for? Where should I direct my work? What are the goals to achieve? To be the master of one's life is the destiny of man.