A Budget for the New Media Age – Part 1

If you’re reading this, congratulations! Most of us want to run for the hills at the word “budget”, myself included. I envision complicated spreadsheets and endless columns of numbers, not to mention the dire prospect of seeing my dwindling funds summed up in a neat row at the bottom. Fear not, frugal consumer, for you are not alone. I’ll walk you through how to get an accurate idea of where your money is going without ever having to balance your checkbook. All you need is access to your accounts via online banking and a spreadsheet application like Excel. Part 1 will arm you with the information you need about spreadsheet applications and online banking. Part 2 will give you some pointers on how to proceed once you’ve got those tools working to your advantage.

Spreadsheets are Your Friend
If you’re like most people, the thought of working on a spreadsheet is pretty dismal. However, they are critical for tasks like budgeting. Spreadsheets eliminate human error by performing complicated equations for you and are a sure time-saver when used correctly. Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers are the most common retail programs, ranging from $40 to $80. If you don’t have the money to spend on new software, take advantage of the many free applications available to you online. Google Documents, OpenOffice.org Calc, and Gnumeric are the most widely used web-based and downloadable options.

Beginners should familiarize themselves to their new application by reading any and all tutorials or guides that come with these programs under the “Help” menu. If there are still questions, simply type “Free [Name of Program] Tutorial” into your favorite search engine and start taking notes. Pay close attention to any sections or information on importing files.

Online Banking is the New Pink
If you are a customer of one of the leading consumer banking institutions, you most likely have access to your account detail online. If you don’t already take advantage of this feature, log on to your bank’s website or head to your local branch and find out how to gain access. These online services are all completely secure and should come free of charge just for having an account. Once you have online access to your accounts, you’re ready to roll up those sleeves and get to work!

Eliminate the Data Entry
In order to draft a budget, you’ll first need to know how much money you spend, and what you spend it on. The most accurate way to do this is to analyze every expense from the past three or four months and start totaling up those charges. Without online banking and spreadsheet software, this would be an arduous task indeed. Since you now have the ability to download your transaction history digitally via online banking, it’s easy to bring that data from your browser to your spreadsheet application. If you are having trouble with this, consult technical support on your bank website.

Next time: We’ll take this spreadsheet to the next level and turn it into a reasonable monthly budget.