How to Create a Budget After Graduating College

Graduating college and living on your own, often starting your first full-time job, can be a stressful experience. Getting used to more money, but more expenses, can be quite a transition.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Excel, or other spreadsheet software
• Current bills
• Current income

1. First, sit down at your computer and create a basic spreadsheet in Excel. This can also be done on paper or even in a word processing program. Make 2 rows: 'Expenses' and 'Income'.

2. Write down all your monthly expenses. These include debt, car payments, rent, food, gas, and your regular allotment of savings, if you save some of your paycheck (you should be!).

3. Add all these items up together, and put that total in your 'Expense Total' row (below all your listed expenses). If you are using Excel, you can create an AUTOSUM formula to add up the expenses for you.

4. In the next 'Income' row, list all your monthly sources of income. This can include salary, money from your parents, freelance income, or any other sources of money you get on a regular basis.

5. Add up all your sources of income together in your 'Income Total' row. This can also be done using AUTOSUM in Excel.

6. Finally, subtract your 'Expense Total' from your 'Income Total'. You should have a positive number. This is your money left over after you have paid your bills for the month. If you have a negative amount, then you need to scale back the amount you spend on food, gas, or other items that can be changed.
   
   Continue to track your spending monthly and figure out where you are spending too many money and where you can cut back (fast food).

Tips & Warnings

• Rent/Mortgage should not exceed 40% of your net income

Resources

• Automatic Budget Calculator

[TeryLynne]

on 12/11/2008 Very good article and should be on the home page! 5*