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.

If you remember before the credit card concept came into the market, we used to simply call up a lender and would get money in a single step by mortgaging an asset. Otherwise you wouldn’t have had to mortgage. You’d simply show some asset for credibility on which you could loan money. This was a simple transaction and was by far the fastest and most convenient. Even today, loaning money from private lenders seems to be the best way to borrow money in comparison to many other methods like the ones mentioned above. Think about the numerous fees that you’ve got to pay your credit card company or bank for borrowing money. First of all, why would I borrow money if I had money with me is a logical question that I’d like to ask all these crediting companies and banks. Borrowing money from a lender only necessitates me to pay interest for a specific period of time. Nowadays with crediting companies raising their fees after the new credit rules proposed by the government in the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act 2009 , I think I’ll opt for the olden and simple option of loaning from a credible lender.

There are still other reasons why I think a mortgage lender is preferable. If you visit a lending company, these days you’ll get only 80-85 of the value of the property you intend to loan for. Earlier you’d get about 95 -100 percent or more but now lenders have slashed the amount of money they lend. Other than that the lending most often involves an internal valuation of your asset which by itself is an expensive process. You can always visit the Nationwide  Lending Corporation price estimators to get a preliminary idea of the amount of money you could borrow on your property.

The next point that you should consider is the sky-rocketed fees charged by some lending companies just for arranging your loan on top of the usual lump-some as product fee. Consider Halifex for example, which charges £99 as the arrangement fee + £499 for a two-year fixed loan or £1,249 for a three year tracking loan. If you calculate the total fees that you have to pay along with the money you’ve borrowed you’ll definitely want to shun these big lending companies and go to that good old mortgage lender you’ve known to have served you during tough times before.

If you think you’ve done a wise thing by going for some ‘fee-free’ lending companies , be sure to know that these ‘good Samaritans’ are actually going to compensate their income by charging you higher income rates. This is what some ‘secured loan’ providers like Ocean Finance, Black Horse Personal Finance and Platinum Loans are doing.

When you are going for personal loans don’t go for some complex debt with repayment insurance attached. You’ll only end up paying more interest and any other amounts that the fee demands. Alliance & Leicester, Tesco and Asda are some of the smaller loaning companies that you can think of loaning firms that you can visit as they charge lesser than 9 % on interest. Don’t go for big companies like Virgin Money and Direct Line only for borrowing for personal loans.