The Importance of a personal budget

If you're the type of person who always has plenty of cash, knows exactly where every penny goes and never has trouble paying bills, I only have one question: What are you doing here ? You're either too rich or too smart to need it.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Personal budgeting course

Our next personal budgeting course will run on Saturday 10 APRIL 2010 in Centurion. The course reguires a investment of R 500 (spouse can attend for free). The candidates will have 3 x follow up sessions to determine their success in applying the learning material. The course is SAQUA alligned but no assesment is done. This will give you the tools to be out of debt in 5 years (including your house) if you stick to the rulespla.

This might just be the best R500 INVESTMENT you have ever made in your family
fULL DETAILS AVAILABLE WHEN BOOKING IS DONE
Phone us now - Places are filling up fast

0828051615

email : finance@brandow.co.za

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The “dubious” joy of personal financial budgeting

The “dubious” joy of personal financial budgeting
Why does most people avoid creating a budget and fewer still stick to one. We will assist you in facing this giant and conquer it
If you're the type of person who always has plenty of cash, knows exactly where every penny goes and never has trouble paying bills, skip this chapter. You're either too rich or too smart to need it.
Normal people like you and me unfortunately, have to do - and stick to - a budget as an essential tool for ensuring that our money gets used the way we need it to. You may think that you have more than enough money but the homework involved in drawing up a budget can be instructive, since you may find that you are spending more than you wish on luxury items , electronic gadgetry or restaurant meals and other such nice things !
Denial is a major problem in the budgeting process. Most people do not want to face their giants. They do not want to know where the money goes – it is thus easier to just spend it! This is a major impediment to budgeting. Having bought stuff that you don’t need and basically very seldom use is sometimes just a brag thing – I have a better sound system than you. Keeping up with the Jones’s kind of a thing.
The bulk of budgeting pains are in the beginning – getting used to some form of discipline. Sometimes it involves a pride to be gotten over – You wife or significant other might not like the discipline and this might just give birth to subjects for “discussions”
Drawing up a budget is one thing – sticking to it is the next hurdle. Once you have the budget in place monitoring it should become a habit. For this specific reason we have introduced into our course a bi-monthly meeting (which you commit to with initial training) and your improvement ( or lack there-of ) is tracked. We supply you with the electronic tool to do this

Monday, March 15, 2010

The “Joys” of Budgeting

The “Joys” of Budgeting
In the next few weeks the postings on this blog is going to focus on personal budgeting
We have developed a full one day course covering these aspects and showing students
(grown up ones and potentially rich ones at that) how to do a personal budget and stick to it. If you follow our guidance you can be out of debt (totally and forever) within 5 years. No Bull and this includes your house !
1. Budgets are a necessary evil.
But it is the practical way to know what you’re spending - and to make sure your money is being used the way you intended it to be used. This is a discipline thing ! – we are going to talk about that a lot
2. The following are the basic steps in creating a budget
a. First determine what you are spending your money on – use a template available from us.
b. Determine your long term financial goals and evaluate your current spending against that
c. On a monthly basis track your spending to make sure it stays within your determined guidelines.( again using the template supplied by us)
3. . Don't be too finicky
When you use a computer program to do your budget you can get bogged down into too much detail. Detail is good – too much is not. Once you have gone through your prioritized detail and decide what to expand and what to cut out and the sums have made sense focus on these and worry less about other aspects of your spending.
4. The dangers of drawing too much cash and too regularly
If you find that you have drawn R1000 today and tomorrow you need to draw money again you might have a thief around – You ! Readily available cash in your wallet is a drawcard for unnecessary spending. Keep n little black book and keep record of what you are spending your cash on
5. Spending beyond your limits is dangerous.
But if you do, you are amongst good company(or bad ones depending on how you look at it )
You will need to make some serious efforts to cut back – the discipline thing !

6. Beware some luxuries disguise themselves as necessities.
A Budget should balance with the “surplus” being a surplus (+) and not a deficit (-) at the end of the exercise. It is when luxuries disguise themselves and you spend on them thinking it is a necessity that the balance is thrown out
7. The 10% rule
Your budget should ideally show spending of a maximum of 90% of your income – that way you will be saving 10% every month ! This should ideally go into a notice deposit account – you must not be able to draw it without giving notice.
8. The extras.
Don’t count “possibilities” into your budget. Bonuses , tax rebates etc should be windfalls and should ideally be going into the notice account !
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9. Beware of inflation
As your income increases over time and you start earning more money discipline can easily go out the window. Use this extra money as part of your long term goals. Notice deposit !
10. Last but not least = Discipline
If you lack this and do not keep to these rules debt councillors are in your future ! Sure Sure !