Putting Your Day-To-Day Expenses into Categories…

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We sort our spending into categories in the same way we used to play with blocks!

How do you organise the dozens of things you need so that it's easy to know if you can afford them?

• This pay-period you might need a large grocery shop so you need to be able to put more of your money in that area.
• For the last few pays you might have been putting aside something for that special weekend away or for that DVD player.
• The dog may have to go to the vet.
• Plus there are all the incidentals like take-aways and transport.

Look back at the Day-To-Day expenses you underlined. We're going to put them in groups that make sense.

We call these groups “Categories” and we decide that we will put aside a certain amount of money each pay for each category.

You can call a category anything that you like. Commonly used categories include:

• Food,
• School clothes,
• Clothing,
• Transport,
• Pets and the list goes on.

Your challenge now is to come up with a group of categories that suits you. Try for 5 to 10 categories that cover all the items you underlined earlier.

Here's where the fun begins!

You know how much you have in total for the pay-period… now you need to give the money to the different Categories. There'll be some give and take here. With manual budgets you used to have tins or envelopes and share the money around. Today it's easier to use the computer as the Day-To-Day money is both in cash and in the bank.

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