Lauren Cobello » Budgeting » Budget Tips and Tricks » How to Budget Your Bills in 6 Simple Steps
One of the hardest things for many of us is coming up with a practical budget that is not overly complicated. Learning how to budget your bills is a very important first step. The theory is simple enough – “Don’t spend more than you make”, but the execution take a little more work. A commonly asked question I get is – “Is there a how to budget method that I can show me how to stick with it for the long term without giving up?”
Budgeting at the core isn’t “spending less” or living with nothing. Budgeting is really being intentional with your finances – Telling your money where to go. Your money is going to go somewhere. It always does. The issue is do you know where your money is going? If not, here’s some tips to help you get more control over your money.
This step might seem obvious, but if you don’t have all of your monthly bills written down in one place, you need to do it.
Here’s how the bill situation looks for most people:
Is is still as simple as we imagine? It is easy to be disorganized with our bills because they hit us from all sides. Get out a sheet of paper, a notebook, or your Personal Finance Planner. Make a list of all your bills, when they’re typically due, and what method you’ll use to pay it. Let’s turn this ‘how to budget your bills’ question into a successful budgeting strategy!
Take that same list of bills and put it in order of priority. If your money is tight one month, you don’t want to be paying your cable bill before your student loans. Needs, financial responsibilities, and necessities always should be paid before luxuries and ‘wants’. If a financial crisis hits, you want to make sure more important bills get your money first.
Once your Bills are prioritized. Total up the entire list. Now you have a complete Bill and recurring monthly expense list plus a payment priority structure set up! Take that bill total and subtract it from your total monthly take-home pay amount. It is important not to use your gross (before taxes) paycheck amount.
If your take-home pay is enough to cover all your regular bills, that’s awesome! But what about your other expenses? You should also consider how much you are spending every month on the ‘other stuff’.
I’m talking about:
Where is the rest of your money going? Knowing how to budget your bills can cover a lot more areas than we typically think of at first glance. See if you can afford all of these other additional expenses with your take-home pay as well.
Whether you can afford all of your bills and other expenses or not, you should still be looking for ways to cut expenses. I’m not talking about going crazy. You can save a TON of money without selling everything you own and moving your family of 5 into an electricity-free, plumbing-free ‘tiny home’. Here are my TOP ways to easily and quickly cut thousands off of your expenses:
Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom or you have a 7am-6pm M-F career. There are so many ways in this modern age to make money on the side! Use this extra money to build an emergency fund, save for Christmas or a vacation, or pay down more debt. Besides my list of 24 side-hustles, here’s a list of other ways to make more money on the side:
In closing, learning how to budget your bills sounds easy at first. But after digging into it a bit more, it is pretty complicated. By following these 6 easy steps, you can be well on your way to an organized budget!
COMMENTS
Thanks for these tips Lauren! I miss your podcast! I love ALDI too and would love another ALDI podcast!!:)
I am curious about your decision to remove the Goldman Sachs promotion from blog (but thankful you did). Hope you write about that choice – your honest style is what I enjoy most.
Laura – sometimes it is hard to do the right thing. I will leave it at that, but I feel right about my decision to remove it. I do miss the podcast as well BUT I am moving to YouTube. Look for some AWESOME YouTube videos comes soon!
Thank you! I look forward to watching you on YouTube! Thanks for being real – that is why people are drawn to you! Enjoy the rest of your week 🙂
Thanks Laura 🙂
This article is great but being more specific on “financial responsibility” needs to be broken down. Such as rent! The roof over your head should be the first and most important of all! So many people disregard rent and mortgage payments because they can’t budget before moving in or buying a new place..
Hey Lauren,
Austin here. Just discovered your site recently and I’m glad I did.
Just a heads up, but there’s a broken link on your about page. You link to your about page, but then it goes here: https://iamthatlady.com/about-i-am-that-lady/
Which doesn’t seem to work.
That’s on your /media page.
Just thought you should know.
Austin!
Number 4 can be a killer! Writing them all down sometimes is enough to show you that you have a problem in spending!!! I don’t even want to go into what happened when my wife and I started looking at the trips to Chic-fil-a every week lol. Thanks for sharing
Hi I have just saw your online shop and website.as I really need budgeting printables and some budgeting bill due payment stickers. And will order some soon. So thank you take care bye.