Book Review: How to Make a Budget
Recently I wrote about how to create a simple household budget that will allow you to track where you are spending your money. Bryan Carr’s Kindle Edition e-book, “How to Make a Budget: Simple Budget Techniques and Tips on Saving Money” takes the realm of budgeting a notch higher. His book not only helps you see where you money goes, but it also features several money saving tips that are quite useful, as well as what to do with the money you saved following his suggested frugal spending.
His recommended budgeting strategy is to create a baseline budget using data from your recent three months statements of all your bank accounts and credit cards, including receipts of purchases. Although he added receipts of purchases includes cash, this is where I find the baseline input lacking. We usually do not get receipts for our cash purchases such as your lattes, magazines, parking fees, fast food and the likes. These could add up to a lot when we calculate how much these are costing us for three months. This flaw, however, is compensated by the free budget template that can be downloaded from his site. I always prefer digital recording of dollars and cents rather than paper and pencil that is so yesterday.
His money saving suggestions ranges from knowing the difference between your wants and needs to practical advice on slashing your household expenses and impulse buying. I especially like his suggestion to consider switching to a prepaid cell phone services, which meant you only pay for the minutes used. If I can just convince my husband to do this (LOL)
In conclusion, I recommend this book for the novices in budgeting and taking control of their finances. If you are in this category, I admit that it will take time to set your baseline budget. All you need is determination, patience and practice. Get yourself into action and follow the money saving ideas listed in this book and you will be well on your way to living within his means and saving money for your future. Click on the image to go to the book’s Amazon page.
Note: To satisfy FTC guidelines, I want to mention that this is an independent review of the book. I was not compensated for the review though I received a free copy of the electronic book.