I have had a few responses, mostly through email, to my post, 6 Tips to Find Money for College.

This comment addresses all the responses well:

G says: I really need some advice on budgeting. Whenever I get money, after I pay bills I just want to splurge. How do you keep yourself in check? You talked about the cash method, but I was thinking about that and how much to allot to the miscellaneous and splurge expense fund– do you keep money in an envelope for possible emergencies as well? I don’t know if I could make myself do something like that, but I want to and need to start saving money!

I’ll use Bookworm as an example. I put her on a budget about a year ago. She has a few things we know she likes to splurge on (such as a yearly used book fair and Christmas) so we included that into her budget. Because of how we have it set up, she has plenty of money to cover even a small monthly splurge.

I suggest you check out this budgeting worksheet I created. The tax percentages are all for ARIZONA, since that is where I live. Use estimates if you don’t know exactly what your cost is but ALWAYS round up. If you get paid every 2 weeks rather than 2 times per month, there is a slight discrepancy. I currently have it set so it takes your salary and divides it into the 12 months, not calculated for the extra two paychecks. All you need to do is SAVE those two paychecks. If you are interested in using it and live in another state, please comment and I’ll look up those restrictions as well. I am working on creating this into a program, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Your Steps:

1. Define your goals.
• What are you saving for? (Ex: a house, school)
• How much will you need?
• When will you need it?
2. Enter in your salary
3. Enter in all your known expenses.
• Be sure to include money for fun stuff, a small splurge, eating out or going to a movie. You should budget for at least 2 fun things a month, I suggest budgeting for at least 1 a week. In case you’re worried, taking yourself to a movie costs only about $10, eating out can cost anywhere from $5 - $50.
• Also make sure you include money for emergencies – such as an accident or medical bills that come up immediately.
4. See how much you have left in your monthly budget

From there, you have quite a few options. You can:

5. Save all the extra money so you can meet your goals quickly.
6. Use a little extra for your “fun money” – allow yourself to splurge a little more and save the remainder.
7. Spend all the extra money and don’t save. (I don’t recommend this.)

If you are saving to reach a certain goal, we’ll use getting a graduate degree, you need to figure out how much you’ll need and when you’ll need it. If it will cost you $60,000 to go back to school and you want to go back in two years, you will need to save $2,500 per month. Things you can do to get this much:

8. You can take away “splurge money” and anything you don’t need to spend money on (I suggest making sure you save at least some money to have fun)
9. You can also start investing in CDs, the stock market, etc. in order to have your money grow at a faster rate. What you can earn on the money you have already saved is not included. This will help you reach your goal faster, but there are always risks. Be sure to ask for all the risks associated with this.
10. Take a second job OR make concessions – can you spend less (cut out the daily cup of Starbucks), get a loan, or put it off a little longer?