Creating a Budget to eliminate debt.

Being disorganised with my financial paperwork has created more stress in trying to manage my finances. I am starting to feel that I am gaining control now. This is what I did to get organised and create a budget.

I gathered all the bills and records I had for the last 12 months. From this I worked out and wrote down the:

• fees & charges including late penalties, direct debit fees
• interest rate
• repayment due dates
• amounts paid over last year

for:

• credit cards, no-interest & store cards
• loans
• electricity, gas, rates, water
• insurance: car, house, life, accident, illness
• college fees

I have also worked out an estimate of what I spent on:

• food
• car: registration, petrol, maintenance, repair
• clothes, hair, pharmacy
• entertainment
• textbooks, education expenses
• medical expenses
• holidays
• internet & phone
• house & garden
• internet marketing schemes!

This has taken me the last 3 weeks to sort through the mess and find out all this information. I found out that we waste a lot of money just through being busy and disorganised. Our grocery bill is now half what it was and we seem to be surviving. We have cut out take away, munchies at the corner shop and videos to start with and gone back to cooking simple meals. It feels good to be taking action rather than hoping.

Now I know what the real costs are, when everything is due to be paid and what amounts are due. So everything above that is being directed into the mortgage. I am looking at a few different ways to record and monitor my expenses to see what works the best for us.