Tag: variable expenses

Step 77: Make a Year Budget

~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment
Step 77 of the 100 steps mission to financial independence: Make a Year Budget
Step 77 of the 100: Make a Year Budget

We’ve looked in detail at making a monthly budget where you carefully plan your expenses per category per month to ensure that you achieve your goals, both short-term as well as long-term, especially when it comes to savings, pension and investment goals. Without a budget it is easy to overspend and to lose the overview of where your money goes each month.

In addition to making a monthly budget it is wise to also draw up a yearly budget in which you make a yearlong plan for your expenses. We’ve already touched upon this a little when we discussed making a monthly budget, when we looked at the importance of bearing in mind certain yearly expenses that don’t come up every month but might come up just a few times or even just once a year.

A yearly budget doesn’t only ensure that you remember to budget for these expenses though. The added advantage of a yearly budget is that you can make a better and more accurate plan for your expenses by bridging the gap between your long-term financial goals with your day-to-day spending patterns. Of course, having a monthly budget already gives you the opportunity to plan expenses far better than if you just spend without being fully aware of your monthly total spending pattern. But it won’t give you as much insight into whether you are on your way to achieving your long-term financial goals or whether you are still quite a long way off. By making a budget for a full year you get a far better overview of this. Continue reading “Step 77: Make a Year Budget” →

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Step 19: Budget with the 50/20/30 rule

~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment
Step 19 of the 100 steps mission to financial independence: Budget with the 50/20/30 rule
Step 19: Budget with the 50/20/30 rule

When you were making your first budget in step 17, you might have felt it was a bit of a stab in the dark. Maybe you would have appreciated a simple formula that indicated how to allocate your money in a way that would just make it faster and easier to budget. A formula that also ensured you’d work towards you goals. Or maybe you were happy to rely on your own methods but would now like to find out about a general indicator of how much to allocate to each area.

In this step we are going to have a closer look at a very common concept in budgeting, the so-called 50 / 20 / 30 rule. I’d like to think of it as a guideline more than a rule, as depending on your financial position and your goals, your expense patterns change and you might spend more or less in certain categories at certain moments in your life. It is therefore wise to not just adopt but to adapt this guideline and adjust it to your own specific needs and circumstances.  Continue reading “Step 19: Budget with the 50/20/30 rule” →

Step 10: Identify your Variable Expenses

~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ 1 Comment
Step 10 of the 100 steps mission to financial independence: Identify your Variable Expenses
Step 10: Identify your Variable Expenses

In step 9 we looked at fixed expenses, but apart from these regular payments of a set amount, you most likely also have regular expenses which vary from one month to the next: your so called variable expenses. Indeed a variable expense generally:

  1. is an expense of a variable amount that you have some control over
  2. has a regular time interval
  3. is needed for day-to-day living
  4. you can cut down by making small lifestyle or behavioural changes.

An example of variable expenses include groceries: you need to eat for day-to-day living, they have a regular time interval, as you probably go to the supermarket several times a month but contrary to your fixed expenses, you have some control over the amount on your grocery bill. Continue reading “Step 10: Identify your Variable Expenses” →