A Budgeting App is simply a system that enables you to track your expenses in any given week, month, or year. A Budgeting App such as MoneyPatrol will allow you to see where you have been spending easily. It will enable you to create budgets as per your requirements to ensure you are not paying more than what you intend to spend at any given time on any spend category. For example, the MoneyPatrol Budgeting App will help you analyze your spending activity for the previous month; you can identify how much money you have spent on Food, Groceries, Entertainment, Shopping, Car Maintenance, Gas/Fuel, and such categories.
Using a Budget Planner App such as MoneyPatrol, you can create a Budget for each of these categories indicating how much you ideally want to spend for Food, Groceries, Entertainment, Shopping, Car Maintenance, Gas/Fuel, etc. If you were to overspend in any of these expense categories, it would impact your overall budget for the month. Using this Budgeting App, you can ensure that you are living within your means and not spending more than you earn or can afford. Using a Budgeting App can be an effective tool to help you get your financial life in order.
Why Should We Use a Budgeting App such as MoneyPatrol?
Budget planning is an essential aspect of financial management for both businesses and households. If you want to do a better job at managing finances, then budgeting is the key. When you do Budgeting, you are actually going through a rigorous exercise of understanding your income and how your expenses compare against your income.
- Budget planning makes it easy to plan for expenses and accounting for overall income, and promotes accountability and transparency.
The biggest challenge that most people face is a lack of understanding in planning their budget. The key issue here is that it will take a lot of time for someone to do the analysis of their past transactions. This involves getting bank and credit card statements, going through each transaction and then categorizing this transaction. This would involve a lot of manual work and could easily discourage someone. But budget planner apps such as MoneyPatrol make it very easy and straight forward to create and track Budgets. Financial management platforms such as MoneyPatrol allow users to manage their income, track their expenses, and plan for the future by simplifying and automating majority of the budgeting work.
What are the Essential Components for Planning a Budget?
Below are the key components for creating a reasonable, adequate, and practical budget for yourself:
1. Income
Through the help of a budget planner app, the first element you should focus on should be Income. Identify the amount that you earn (excluding taxes) every month.
- Some people receive bi-weekly income/salary payments, while others receive a weekly or monthly income.
- To create a budget as per your income, it is essential to identify the correct amount you receive every month.
You can then even go further to determine the type of your income.
- There are different types of incomes, such as earned income (salary that you receive), passive income, and capital gains income.
Always create a budget for your overall income as it will help reduce unnecessary spending and will make you accountable.
2. Expenses
Expenses are basically where you spend your money.
There are three critical types of expenses:
Fixed Expenses:
These are expenses whose amount does not change often. These expenses include rent, mortgage payments, student loans, and other loan payments. The amounts you have to pay in these expenses do not change every month.
Variable Expenses:
These are expenses whose amount changes every month. When putting down your expenses, food expenses should be top on the list to ensure they are catered for first.
Unplanned Expenses:
These expenses may arise out of unexpected situations.
- These expenses include urgent medical bills or car or house repairs.
- To handle these incidental expenses, you should consider creating an emergency fund.
This fund ensures that you have enough money saved aside to tackle such unexpected bills without going over your budget or taking unnecessary loans.
What are the Benefits of Using a Budgeting Planner App such as MoneyPatrol?
Creating a Budget and using a budgeting app such as MoneyPatrol offers many benefits related to helping you become smarter with your money, enabling you to save more money and achieve your financial goals.
Tracking Expenses
Tracking expenses regularly helps you identify if you live within your means or above your means.
- Tracking expenses makes one conscious about the importance of saving money.
- Not tracking expenses usually leads to not saving enough money for the future.
Always ensure that you track your income and your expenses. It is one of the ways that you can quickly identify unnecessary expenses. It helps one cut down on living costs.
Promotes Prospective Budgeting
Prospective budgeting is being conscious of the kind of budget you should set.
- It is done by identifying your earnings, expenses, savings, and investments, and it helps you prepare for the future.
Most guru investors can attest that the only way they built their empires is by being conscious about financial management.
- They relied on resources that made them push towards making their finances streamlined.
Understanding this helps one lookout for other ways to invest and create more income.
Transparency in Financial Management
Recent research in marital health has highlighted that poor financial management is the leading cause of conflicts in marriages.
- Sharing such information amongst partners helps build trust and transparency, leading to better personal relationships.
Manage your finances in partnership with your spouse or other business partners. A budgeting planner can help make financial management easy.
- Budgeting apps such as MoneyPatrol have features that allow two or more parties to access the budget planner.
Improves Decision-Making
Being conscious of your spending makes you aware of your decisions, including investing, cutting on your expenses, and developing a passive form of income.
- Understanding how you have been spending your money highlights the changes you need to make to your lifestyle.
For example, suppose you plan to move into a four-bedroom apartment.
- In that case, you become more conscious and get a cheaper and more affordable house.
Tracking your expenses earns you peace of mind because you understand how you spend your money and know where your money is going.
Risk Management
Everyone’s life is filled with risks. One may have a stable job, but one could unexpectedly lose their job due to how the broader economy performs.
- If you live paycheck to paycheck, suddenly being out of work will put immense pressure on your finances.
Having a proper budgeting plan helps you prepare for such emergencies by ensuring you have enough savings set aside so that you can survive financially for a few months until you find a new job.
One of the Means to Grow Rich and Wealthy
- To grow wealthy, you need to organize your finances efficiently to start saving and setting aside finances for investment.
- With a budgeting app such as MoneyPatrol, you can quickly grow your savings and implement wise investment strategies.