Creating a household budget needs to be one of the first steps in any plan to take control of your spending and financial situation. The purpose of a household budget is to figure out how much money you have coming in and where it is going out on expenses. Now you are armed with all the information it’s time to make some changes to reach your goals.

Here are the basic steps to creating a household budget.

1: Calculate Your Incomings: This should be fairly easy. You need to calculate your average incomings per month from all sources pay checks (after tax), bonuses and dividends from any investments. If there are some payments you only get once or twice a year such as bonuses then average that figure out over a year to give you a typical month.

2: Calculate Your Outgoings: Calculating your outgoings is a little bit more complicated as you spend money in far more ways than you earn it. Print off statements for the past couple of months for all your bank and credit card accounts and run through them to classify where your money is being spent and how much is going out each month. Transactions from debit cards or credit cards may be easier to keep tabs on but it’s hard to see where cash withdrawn from ATM’s has ended up. A simple way to keep tabs your cash spending is using creating a spending diary in a notepad and jotting down everything you spend money on each day such as lunch and coffee at work and anything else you spend. Hopefully you will find your typical outgoings are lower than your incomings but often this is not the case. You may be surprised to find your outgoings are higher than you incomings which means you will be pushing yourself deeper into debt each month which is not sustainable.

3. Classify Your Outgoings: Once you have worked out all your outgoings it makes sense to classify them together into categories such as groceries, utilities, clothes, entertainment, loan repayments, travel and so on. This will allow you to see what percentage of your outgoings is going where.

4: Sort out the essentials, the nice to haves and the not required: Now you can see where your money is going then you need to decide what can be changed. There may be some expenses on there that you feel cannot be changed such as rent or mortgage payments, insurances and so on. If you need to make large cutbacks then perhaps even these items could be reduced by downsizing your home. If you don’t want or need to go to such lengths as moving home then you need to seek other areas for cutbacks. Perhaps you could switch your broadband, cell phone and landline phone deals to a more optimal plan, you could switch to a cheaper pay TV package or get rid of it all together. Common areas for cutbacks are reducing your entertainment and shopping expenses for items such as dining out, buying music, clothes and so on.

5: Make Goals: You should now have figured out what you are spending and where you can make cut backs. You shouldn’t be aiming to create a budget just to survice on; you should be looking to have spare money to increase your net worth each month. A couple of methods of raising your net worth is by lowering your debts or by raising your savings. If you are in debt then the goal should be to get out of debt as soon as possible. Set goals for how much you want to pay off per month and build this into your budget. Once you have paid off debts then the focus can become on saving money each month via a high interest savings account. You will find that when you make regular payments the interest will start to accumulate with high interest savings account products. Your goal shoudl eb to improve your financial situation every month and prioritize debt reduction, savings and investments to reach your goals faster. There could also be other uses for the money such as investing it in shares or managed funds.

6: Keep Yourself in Check: Make sure you keep reviewing your budget and looking for areas where you can make further trimmings and savings. Don’t forget that a budget is not just about managing to get from one pay check to the next but should be a long term plan to improve your financial wellbeing.

This article is written by Richard Greenwood of www.compareyourbank.com.au a consumer finance comparison site to help consumers find the best credit card. Visitors can then apply online for any featured products direct with the banks.