Be Smart – Budget Smart!
August 4th, 2011
What are some of the tools that one should look for when creating and monitoring performance against a budget? One of the very first things that one needs to look at is the ability to divide and conquer. Traditionally one needs to be able to sort and separate different types of purchases and expenses into unique categories. If one takes advantage of the free online services offered by Clear Checkbook Budget Calculator and uses the helpful features provided to create new categories on their own, simply uses the templates provided, or a combination of both, they will nonetheless have a very broad selection of categories to start with:
- • Eating Out
- • Groceries
- • Housing
- • Rent/Mortgage
- • Utilities
- • Living Expenses
- • Clothing
- • Entertainment
- • Travel
- • Transportation
- • Car Insurance
- • Car Payment
- • Gas
- • Maintenance
- • Miscellaneous
Covering all of the major categories that one needs to consider to start the budgeting process, one can see that right out of the blocks that this free service offered by ClearCheckbook Budget Calculator will get both the novice and the experienced budgeter off to a good start for managing their monthly expenses. With the ability to customize categories as well, what more could one ask for free? With the service offered in English, Español, Italiano, and Português one will also have a nice selection of major languages to use for their own personal budgeting purposes.
Any experienced budgeter knows that one’s ability to sit down and slice and dice how and where they are spending their money is the first step towards making the changes necessary to do a better job at making sure that there is value in every purchase made. This sets the tone for asking more important questions such as, “Would I be better off to delay this purchase and perhaps direct some more money towards savings or investments for the future?” When one begins the process of budgeting, they will find that they start to ask themselves a lot of questions related to improving their finances and making fewer and fewer “impulse” buys.
By offering this free service to anyone willing to sign-up, the ClearCheckbook Budget Calculator is actually performing a wonderful social service by making available a disciple that everyone can benefit from. Those that advise one to just spend, spend, and spend without any considerations for where their money is going are few and far between. By far, the vast majority of financial advisors advocate developing a personal budget and they are very often most happy to charge you money to help you do so. To be offered a resource that will guide you through the process for free is really quite exceptional.
Offering a complete package that supports a total budgeting process, ClearCheckbook focuses their free software package on the key fundamentals of budgeting:
- • Bill Tracker
- • Budget Calculator
- • Reminders / Recurring Transactions
- • Spending Reports
- • Import Transactions
- • Transaction Register
- • More Financial Tools