Budgeting guidelines to follow

The idea of budgeting to most people is the fact it looks stressful. Your budget does not have to be detailed to the least details.

1. Make it short

Your budget does not have to to be detailed to the last item. Doing this would make your budget confusing which might make it difficult to achieve your budgeting goals.

Create a budget which is simple to understand. The fewer the category, the better for you to make your budget work. You can create a simple budget like the 50/30/20 method of budgeting.

2. Separate your needs from want

To create a good and efficient budget, you have to realise your needs are more important than your wants.

When tracking your spending, you realise that some things you spend money on are not really necessary, they only just desire such things.

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Separating needs from wants would make your budget more precise, leaving out space for unnecessary things which helps your finance.

3. Know how much income you make

You need to know how much income you make on a monthly basis to determine how you want your budget to look like each month.

Knowing how much you make each month, would give you a clear cut idea on how to create your budget.

4. Your budget should be realistic

Create realistic budgets. If you spend a 100,000 naira monthly and you think you can cut it down to 40,000 naira monthly, then you might not be creating a realistic budget.

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Instead of doing such drastic budget moves, you can try to cut down on your budget by 5 or 10 percent and see if you can live on such budget.

Then you can further adjust on it as the months go by and see

5. Review your budget and follow through each month

As you keep track of your income and spending, so also should evaluate your budget every month.

Check out your budget each month and look for grey areas where you can make reasonable adjustments.

Even if there are just little things you need to improve on, just make sure you find ways to adjust it. The little adjustments would have a positive effect on your finance in the long run.

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You also need to follow through with your budget each month. You can't create a budget and you start giving excuses why you can't follow it and then fail to follow through.

It is very important to follow through with your budget to improve your finance.