A budget is a hard thing, and frankly speaking, even after you’ve made a budget, it’s hard to keep, which for many is where personal checks come in. Yes, there are a number of companies that don’t take personal checks. But those that do are helpful, and realistically speaking, if you use it, you can effectively speaking write down your spending right then and there and have a carbon copy to back you up. But more than that, even if you are spending on a card, if you pull out your checkbook and balance it out like you were writing a check, it helps you to know right then and there what money you do have for bills and everything else.
But in terms of making a budget, the biggest thing to do is to live within your means. If you are making an oversized car payment and lease on a car you obviously don’t need and you are going over, it’s time to move down and get maybe a chevy rather than a Mercedes. Likewise, you have to figure out exactly what your balance and bills are. Take housing, car payments, insurance payments, average utilities, and other essential payments and add them up. This is not including entertainment. Entertainment can be determined after you have already figured out these fine details.
This being said, the second big thing is to prioritize. There are people who avoid snacking at movies, they cut coupons, they do everything else. And yet they leave lights on all the time, drive to the next door neighbor’s house, and otherwise spend money that they don’t have to. So the important thing is to be honest with yourself about your actual strengths and pitfalls at the same time. In some ways, tracking it with personal checks can help you to get a better idea of this. Yes, credit cards now have this feature online. But it’s easier to see it on paper.
And finally, you want to set apart an emergency fund. Maybe you want to write a check to yourself every month that you put into a separate account. Maybe you just want to transfer it to your savings funds with automatic withdrawals, maybe you want to do something else. But everybody ultimately speaking needs a rainy day fund. Without one, you have an emergency and nothing to fall back on. But in order to create a healthy budget and sustainable, all of these things need to be done.