Easy Change

To me, its all about retirement. Retiring well, retiring earlier. These are my two goals when it comes to money. And the only way I've been able to work toward that goal is by working on both sides of the expenses/income equation. Reducing expenses comes in the form of paying off debts and scaling back spending and avoiding -- and I mean avoiding like the plague -- any type of installment/interest-based debt. Income generation is either finding ways to make more money in the same amount of time or finding more jobs or income sources. Staying in a budget is the best way to keep track of these changes and ensure that the equation is balanced favorably. Ideally, I'd like to see that I am spending only 75% of my income and saving 25%. That would get me to retirement fast. I'm not sure if that will ever happen; its a lofty goal. Improving The System The system for doing all of these things is my budgetting spreadsheet. I am obsessed with it. That is not a joke or an understateme...

One of my major goals for this year was to take all of the information that I had gathered and get my budgetting spreadsheet updated with all of my personal information. The way that I keep myself in check with money is by using a budget. And the way I stick to the budget is by using a simple excel spreadsheet that I created that has my own personal layout that suits me. It also serves to make sure I get my bills paid on time and keep my accounts balanced. New improvements for the 2007 spreadsheet include bill categorization. During 2006, I had all of the bills itemized which is fine and I will continue to do, but I found that I was really interested in keeping the money in categories -- but probably not the ones you are thinking of -- categories of expenses. For me, there are just three categories: recurring, debt, savings. Recurring expenses or (inescapable expenses) as I like to call them refer to expenses that happen every month and generally cannot be avoided. The sum of these ex...