You might be already aware of scores of ways in which you should budget your spending. You might have gone to financial experts visited money management websites or taken courses on financial literacy etc. But did anybody give you a step by step direction on what you should do and what you shouldn’t to manage your money efficiently? Most often, unless you personally took the trouble for acquiring in-depth knowledge, you are given broad and generalized outlines. These don’t necessarily relate to your unique life situation. Moreover, you are not very precise about your plans. This is the reason for many of us there is a slip between the sip and the cup.

Here’s some advice with a difference. You are not asked to do this and do that for controlling your expenses. More than the implementation process is the careful identification of our spending patterns and the areas on which we spend most. For this you need to do.

• Record your expenditure above $5 – Every expenditure that you make in a month above $5 is worth noting down. Not only your expenditure, but the expenditure of the entire family should be noted. Take the assistance of your family and friends if required.
• Note down your credit card purchases- Don’t be lazy about this paper work. Make a note of your credit card expenditure in a diary. If you have to make any payments in advance please make a note of that in your diary so that you know how much you’ve got to save for paying up that money to the credit card company.
• Use personal finance software - You can always use personal finance budgeting software that is available online for making a database of your income and expenditures for every month. Budget Pulse is a good online resource that provides budgeting tools to assist you in the budgeting process. Quicken Online and desktop software help you with that. They provide you tools to work with for creating your saving plans.

Categorization of your expenses gives you a clear idea of how much you are spending where. Here are some broad categories on which you can jot down your expenditure:

• Mortgage Amount – you might have taken a loan on mortgage and you should be working to release your mortgaged property. This takes up a significant amount of your income. Jot down how much you are paying up every month to your lender. Also keep a note of how many more months or years you’ve got to pay the amount. This gives you a clear idea of the amount of money you need to set aside to pay for your mortgage amounts. The same rule applies for money that you have loaned from banks or any funding agencies. Remember that these are the most important payments that you’ve got to make.
• EMI payments- jot down the amount of money you spend on monthly installments for any household articles that you’ve purchased. Your monthly house rentals should also be listed in this category. Credit card payments should be carefully noted and you should gear yourself well for paying up any forthcoming dues.
• Insurance payments- most of us are covered by some kind of insurance. Either it is life or property insurance, health care insurance or vehicle insurance. You keep paying up every month for these. Make a written note of all these expenditures.
• Utilities- your utilities bill is the most important. Current usage water usage and any other services that you avail from your housing society or municipal bodies are charged and you should note down these expenditures. Also carefully track how much you are spending on each utility. If you find that you are being excessively billed on a particular utility usage for example electricity, just check out your meters and take up the issue with the supply agency. Don’t procrastinate.

Apart from this track down other expenses like the amount you spend for entertainment etc. Remember that gathering information is more important than the implementation of the budgeting process itself because that will give you your budgeting goals and directions.