A budget is often the most effective way to take control of your personal finances and ensure that you can achieve your financial goals. But despite the importance of having a budget, many people don’t know where to start when it comes to creating one.
The good news is that these six simple steps will guide you through the process so you can end up with a budget you can rely on, a budget that will help you achieve peace of mind in your financial life.

Identify your goals

Understanding your motivations for establishing a budget should be your first step. Take time to think about what you are trying to accomplish and prioritize your goals: Are you looking to pay off your debt? build savings or save enough to invest? Understanding where you are starting from and where you want to go is essential to planning your finances well.

List all your available resources:

Before jumping into budgeting, first, start by identifying all available resources to budget for. To do this, add up all your money in your various current accounts, gift cards, holiday vouchers, or cash.
It is important to consider the availability of your resources before assigning them. Thus the money blocked in your various savings accounts or retirement plans could be assigned to savings-type budget categories, which can only be spent when your resources are available.
By adding your accounts or linking your bank accounts in your Fineo space, you will have the total amount you can budget without effort.

Define your budget categories

Defining your budget categories is a critical step because all of your expenses must fall into one of these categories. For this, base yourself on your habits and your commitments: What are the expenses that you make each month and what are the future expenses that you must honor?
To make sure that you don’t forget any category, you can break down your expenses according to the objective: House, Car, Leisure… . You can also proceed by distinguishing between your essential expenses and those that are not.
Fineo allows you to build a budget in three types, which will help you deal with all types of expenses:
– Immediate expenses that you have to meet each month.
– Provisions you need to make for future expenses, such as taxes to be paid once a year, or your quarterly, semi-annual, or annual bills.
– Savings for the money you put aside.

With Fineo, you are offered a standard budget, with the most common categories, which you can customize as you wish. You also have the possibility in Fineo to group your categories for better visibility on your monthly budget. You can thus create a “House” group, for your categories relating to your home, such as rent, telephone, internet, gas, or electricity, another group for leisure, such as the cinema, outings , miscellaneous purchases, etc .

Attribuez chaque centime à une catégorie de votre budget :

Maintenant, que vous avez une idée claire sur toutes vos possibilités de dépenses, répartissez l’ensemble de vos ressources identifiées dans l’étape deux sur vos catégories de budget.
Pour vos dépenses variables, essayez de vous baser sur votre estimation de vos habitudes de dépenses, ou fixez un objectif que vous ne souhaitez pas dépasser. Vous aurez toujours la possibilité de revoir et rectifier ces montants durant votre premier mois de budgétisation, ou après, lorsque vous aurez une idée plus claire sur vos dépenses.
Pour vos dépenses futures, calculer le montant que vous devez mettre chaque mois pour avoir la somme totale au moment où vous devez passer à la caisse. Vous pouvez également adapter le montant alloué chaque mois en fonction de vos entrées et de vos dépenses, mais il faut toujours s’assurer que vous aurez votre somme totale au moment du paiement.
Pour que votre budget soit réaliste, il est important de ne budgéter que l’argent disponible et non pas vos futurs revenus. Aussi, et si vous n’arrivez pas à couvrir toutes vos catégories, essayez de revoir votre répartition en mettant moins dans les catégories non essentielles au profit de celles qui le sont.
Avec Fineo, vous pouvez affecter en toute simplicité vos ressources à vos différentes catégories. Le montant disponible sera mis à jour pour vous indiquer à chaque instant combien il vous reste à allouer, ou si vous avez dépassé vos ressources disponibles.

Track and categorize your expenses

In this step, the objective is to track and assign each expense you make to one of the categories you have identified.
By linking your bank account to your Fineo space, you can retrieve all your transactions easily and securely. You will only have to indicate the categories for the transactions you have imported.
You can also enter your various transactions and categorize them with the web or mobile application.
Fineo will then show you your total expenses by category and how much you still have to spend.

Review your budget regularly.

A budget isn’t final, but it should be reviewed regularly to ensure it meets your goals.
So you can review your budgeted amounts to modify them upwards or downwards. You can also add categories or remove the ones you no longer need. The bottom line is that each expense can be assigned to a category, and each category has meaning to you.
In your Fineo space you will be able to define a budget each month based on your budget for the previous month and your expenses. You will also be able to create new categories, hide or delete those you no longer use.

Conclusion:

By following these steps to create your budget and track it over time, you will be able to understand your spending habits better. This will allow you to identify how to improve your financial situation by spending less on secondary purchases and more on what brings you real value. You will also be able to avoid the surprises of expenses you have forgotten and for which you do not have enough funds. The goal is to manage your financial life with confidence while having the opportunity to make better decisions that will have an incredible impact on your financial life.