There are a couple of online budget tools from Crown Financial Ministries I often refer to either in coaching or for my own personal use. I thought I would share these with you today because they are helpful in either creating a budget, or managing your own monthly spending plan.
Budgetometer
First up is the Budgetometer. I like this tool because it helps you analyze your spending across the three budget buster categories of housing, auto and debt. Simply enter the required information for each category and the budgetometer will show you the percentage of each category as it relates to Net Spendable Income (income after taxes and giving). The summary tells you the findings and and potential problems you might encounter.
This tool leverages Crown’s spending guideline which I’ve found to be reasonable in most cases. How do you use the tool? I recommend using it to help you budget more wisely. Don’t take everything as black and white as everyone has a unique situation. But, it can be used to help you identify problematic areas and to start looking for ways to correct them.
Spending Plan
Next is the Spending Plan Calculator. By entering your gross income, tithe and tax amounts, the Spending Plan Calculator quickly calculates a suggested budget for basic budget categories. For each category, the tool provides a suggested percentage of Net Spendable Income, annual amount, and monthly amount.
How can you leverage this tool? If you’re trying to start a budget, or perhaps you want to review your existing budget, you can use this tool as a guideline. Perhaps you question why the entertainment category in your existing budget is more than the recommended amount. Asking such a question will help you think about tightening up spending, if it’s a problem area for you. I just recently used the spending plan calculator to help me evaluate our family budget and it led us to make some changes.
Irregular Payments
According to Crown, the Irregular Payments tool converts your non-monthly payments into their monthly equivalents, and then provides you with a total. This total represents how much you will need to set aside each month in order to make your non-monthly payments as they come due.
So, we all have those expenses that occur once per year. Christmas spending is a great example. Unfortunately, there sometimes isn’t enough money to pay for them when they come up, so people are forced to user credit cards. This tool is a great reminder we need to be mindful about such expenses and insure they don’t bust our budget. Note: you can do the same thing with an excel spreadsheet or handy calculator, but Crown does offer a few suggested expenditures to make sure you include them.
What do you think of these online budget tools? Have you ever used them? What online budgeting tools do you use?
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