Besides the specter of having to pay the IRS by April 15th, another thought rears its ugly head during the tax season. Just where did all that money you made go? Sure, you can blame the government and higher prices, but there is a nagging feeling that you might be overspending.
So you get out all your paperwork, fire up Quicken and try to figure out where the money has gone. Then you diligently scratch out a budget for the next year, cutting expenses in every category so you can save some money this year. At the end, you are frequently depressed. It just doesn't seem possible to do.

I've come to believe that we are going about the budget process in a self-defeating manner. Rather than using money to support our dreams and values, we subvert them in an effort to repeat the money mistakes we've made in the past. In this article, I'll tell you about an approach that allows you to support your values with your budget.

The other day I received an email from a guy who was looking for some help with his budget. What he really wanted was to run his family like a business.

While I think it’s a great idea to have the mindset that your family does operate with a bottom-line (that can’t or shouldn’t be masked by credit cards and borrowing beyond your means), you also need to remember that creating a home budget needs to be simple - and stay simple.

This guy wanted to know if a personal budget should allow him to do accruals. Heavens no! An accrual is basically where you might pay for an expense (such as car insurance) every six months, let’s say it’s $300. But you know that the expense really applies to the next six months. So you would spread that $300 over the six months - recognizing the expense on a month-by-month basis.

You’ve analyzed your past expenses, put them into spreadsheets, loaded Quicken with all of your data and come up with a budget. Now what? The tough part! You actually have to stick to your budget and put your plans into action. This is easier said than done. In many cases you will have forgotten about your budget and your financial goals 6 months or a year down the road. How do you keep this from happening to you?

Here’s how. Make sure you follow some of these tips below so this doesn’t happen to you.

Creating a budget can be a very difficult task. Although we as consumers know that we need to pay our bills, buy our necessities, and put money away for savings, we don’t really know how to start.

I know from personal experience how hard creating a budget can be. In the beginning stages of my road to financial freedom, I would write all my expenses down on paper and noticed that I had little and sometime nothing left over to save. I tell my clients that seeing everything on paper is only the first of many reality checks while getting their finances in order.

I think all advisors in the financial world can agree that using categories helps tremendously. Everyone will not have the same categories thus making every budget unique.