Organize Expenses in Your Budget in 3 Easy Steps

Organizing your budget effectively to maintain stability. A good budget categorizes expenses, keeping them organized.

The base level of your budget houses fixed expenses. These expenses come first because they’re things you need to survive. This includes rent or mortgage payments, HOA fees, insurance, student loans and car payments. The cost for each fixed expense generally stays the same. However, changes may occur annually. But beyond these annual changes, fixed expenses are usually easy to plan around.

The next level of your budget houses all of your flexible expenses. Flexible expenses are also things you may need to survive, but they have no set cost. As a result, they can get too big to fit into your budget unless you monitor them closely to avoid overspending. This can make flexible expenses trickier to manage because they fluctuate. And some months certain flexible expenses may not show up at all. While it can be harder to control these expenses, they’re also easier to trim down if you need to cut back.

Finally, the top level of your budget is where all the nice-to-haves live. This is your discretionary expenses. This level includes everything from entertainment and subscriptions to tithes and trips to the gym or salon. As tough as it can be to kick these out, you can live without them, if necessary.

As you take stock of discretionary expenses take note of every incidental that may be hiding out. This includes things like your “cappuccino” factor – that’s the $3.50 you spend on specialty coffee each morning. That expense may not seem like much, but it adds up to nearly $1,300 a year! So take note of these small incidentals to make sure they fit in your budget and if they don’t, they have to go.