Basics of Budgeting: Identify Your Bills : Ideas for Women Money ...

In the previous blog post, we discussed the first basic of budgeting, which is to pinpoint how much money that you make.

The next step in the budget process is to figure out what your monthly routine bills are. These should be your fixed expenses?your housing (mortgage or rent payment), auto loan payments, utilities (gas, electric, water, telephone, cell phone, Internet, television, etc.), insurance payments (don?t include premiums deducted from your paycheck that already should have been reflected in your final net pay), loans and credit cards, and any other regular expenses. These are your definites?we will discuss other household expenses later.

Don?t forget the bills that you have automatically deducted from your bank account or charged to your credit card. While you are putting together this information, it is helpful to note the vendor name, amount per month, and monthly due date for future reference. Since some routine expenses can vary slightly from month to month in amount, consider a budgeting option for utilities that will ensure the same payment every month. Or for credit cards, factor in the minimum amount due or the minimum that you personally want to pay every month. If you are still having trouble establishing a monthly amount, consider going back to previous months for the bill and averaging.

The key is to be as accurate and thorough as possible. Knowing what bills that you owe and when they are due can help you to pay your bills in a timely manner.? It can also make it easy to evaluate your expenses to see how you can trim them down.

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