Day 2: Educate us on something you know a lot about or are good at

I've been racking my brain trying to think of something I'm good at that I could teach you about in a blog post (and have made this post a day late in consequence). I've come to the conclusion that either I'm good at a lot of useless things or I'm better at thinking of things I'm not good at.

I do know that I'm exellent at making lists. They're all over the place: in my phone, on sticky notes, in my notebooks.

And one thing I've been listing for years is my monthly budget. I've become pretty good at keeping a budget; or, in other words, I've becoming good at managing my money so that I always have enough every month and don't over spend.

This is a photo of an example (simplified, of course. None of you really need to know what I spend my money on :) of the budget I created myself on excel. I recently started getting paid every other week instead of on the 15th and last day of each month, which has altered the way I have to look at how I budget my money. 

I think the best advice I can give is to have some kind of list every month of what is due and how much, as well as what your income is, so you can see where your money is going, and how you can improve in certain areas. I've had months where I've had to lower payments to credit cards, for example, down to the monthly minimum so that I can pay something else off, or go get my hair done :). 

Don't forget about extra things that come up, such as birthdays, weddings, vacations, home expenses, doctors visits, etc. You can budget for these things by putting together estimates of how much you expect to pay on all of these extra items for the whole year, add them all up, and then divide by 12. This gives you the amount you need to save monthly for these things.

Please leave a comment or email me if you'd like to have the excel file sent to you.