How to manage the family budget? How to manage money scientifically.

What is money how to manage money And what qualities do you need to have for this? To answer these questions, let's look at 2 roles that finance can play in a person's life:

1. Money as the only end in itself.
2. Money is like a tool.

The ability to manage money depends directly on which of these roles they play in your life.

Money as the only end in itself

How is a person different from an animal? Intellect and spirituality. Love, kindness, respect, gratitude, honor, dignity, compassion are eternal human values. This is the power that makes us happy. Perhaps this is the main thing for which we live - to become happy.

However, if you begin to neglect these values ​​and make the only goal in life to earn money, then you will never be able to become truly happy and free. You will not control the money, but they control you.

Look around: how many people today have created an idol for themselves - the golden calf. They worship money, becoming its slaves. Money itself dictates to such people various conditions in life: with whom to be friends, whom to “love”, etc. They have only the physical shell, the mind, but there is no spirituality in broad sense this word.

As soon as a person takes a flat course for money and worships them, there is no need to talk about greatness, about the soul, about happiness. In such a situation, a person's ambition is strongly manifested: who has a more expensive car or a larger yacht.

money as a tool

If you want to manage money, then treat it as a tool for developing your most best qualities. Most wealthy people who have created something in their lives do not lead such a luxurious lifestyle as many people think. Such great personalities understand that you can’t eat a hundred times a day, you can’t drive several cars at the same time. They understand that we come naked into this world and we leave naked.

“Not you for money, but money for you”

Be the master of money, keep spirituality, use money as a tool. Only in this way can you become happy by earning more. For competent money management, it is necessary to understand their role at the level of the city, region, country. How they move cash flows. Where do they go, where do they go. Where do different interests collide? Look at all processes consciously - as if from above. Try to see the whole picture. This will allow you to become even more successful and richer.

Remember that it is more important to cultivate awareness, spirituality, and leadership qualities in yourself. And money is an adjective for your inner development. Having the above qualities and skills, you can always easily manage any amount of money.

What role does money play in your life?

Surely several times a day you spend money on things that you don't really need. A bottle of Coca-Cola from a machine, a cup of coffee from an expensive trendy coffee shop, lunch with colleagues, new game for the phone… The list goes on. In any case, you spend a couple of hundred (or thousand) rubles on every little thing and immediately forget about it.

The reason for this behavior is the lack of financial self-control. Again and again, you make small expenses without thinking about the long term. But here's what the lack of self-control threatens:

• you are not getting closer to achieving big financial goals;
• you have to borrow money;
• you do not know how much money you will have in a day or in a month;
• you are constantly short of money.

Of course, it is not easy to give up the habitual way of life. Creating a long-term plan is more difficult than just overspending and indulging in small pleasures. But if you want to live in abundance and not worry about your own future, you will need the ability to control yourself and your spending. Therefore, we will tell you how to gain self-control in matters related to money.

1. Stop making excuses

Every time you come up with an excuse for spending your money on useless purchases, you prevent yourself from starting to engage in financial planning.

When you buy something you don't need today, you are depriving yourself of something important in the future.

Maybe it's really just a little thing. Maybe you really really want to buy it. Maybe you need a purchase to impress someone.

But if you want to live securely, stop making excuses for yours. Just understand: when you buy some nonsense, you are taking a step back on the path to your financial well-being.

2. Before every purchase, ask yourself: “Can I live without this item?”

To control your financial life, you will have to acquire a useful habit of evaluating each purchase. And it's not about cost.

Do you really need this item? Can you do without it? Is there a cheaper equivalent? Ask yourself these questions every time you are about to make a purchase.

Financial self-control is the ability to say “no” to things that you would have previously said “yes” without thinking.

Ask yourself: "Can I live without this thing?". If you answer “yes”, then you don’t need to buy anything, it’s better to save money for more important things. If the answer is “no”, then ask yourself the following question: “Is there an analogue cheaper?”.

So you learn to evaluate and accept the consequences of each of your decisions and actions.

3. Use only cash, no credit cards

Usually credit cards they issue with a very large limit, and this is no accident: with such a card in hand, it becomes more difficult for a person to control their expenses.

When you don't have real ones on your hands, paper money, when buying it is easy to disregard what you can actually afford. In such a situation, you only care about one thing: the main thing is to have enough. In addition, with a card without a limit, it is much easier to get into trouble like unsustainable bills or large debts.

The solution to the problem is very simple: use only cash. If you find that you don't have enough cash to make it to the next month, think about ways to save money. Spend smarter next month.

Financial self-control is like riding a bicycle. Learn to control yourself on cash, this is your old bike, which is not a pity. And when you feel confident in yourself, you can switch to fancy high-speed bikes - use credit and debit cards.

4. Go to places where you like to spend money without a card and with a little cash

Most people have places where they are unlikely to be able to resist the temptation and are very likely to spend a lot of money on what they want, without even thinking about the consequences. Cafe. Book store. Electronics store. Clothing store. Everyone has their weaknesses.

Perhaps you are expecting advice never to visit such places again. But this will not teach you self-control, but only the avoidance of problems.

Leave the card at home, you only need some cash. If you have not decided exactly what you will buy, go for the first time without money at all and take a closer look. Then go with a specific amount that you need to pay for a coveted purchase.

This process, especially repeated many times, teaches us to resist temptation. And resistance to temptation is the basis of self-control.

5. Focus on participation, not purchases

Often, busy people buy things just to keep in touch with their hobby or passion.

For example, a person passionately loves to read, but life has developed in such a way that almost always there is not enough time. But he continues to buy books that he would like to read (and hopes to read them sometime later). This is a psychological trap: this is how buying replaces execution.

Do something instead of buying substitutes. If the problem is lack of free time, start by reviewing your schedule.

Being involved in something that interests you is incredible. effective method get rid of the obsessive desire to spend more and more money to things that substitute for actual participation. First, read everything from the accumulated pile of books, and only then buy new ones.

6. Choose the right communication format

We all go out to meet other people, spend time away from home and participate in some kind of social activity. Most often, such meetings take place in clubs, restaurants, shops and other places where you have to spend a lot of money.

For example, you go to dinner with friends, then you go to the movies, and then you decide to go to a bar. And your wallet is already missing a couple of thousand rubles.

Beware of this form of communication. You don't have to spend a lot of money to have a good time with friends. For example, you can meet at someone's house. Or any other place where spending money is not a defining activity, but part of the experience: play football in a nearby park or go on a picnic.

Perhaps some of your friends will refuse such a pastime. Well, this is a great test to determine which of your contacts are more interested in going out and spending money and who wants to hang out with you.

7. Keep a close eye on your expenses and review them periodically

The biggest challenge when tracking expenses is that people usually don't have one place where they can collect data on all spending and see where the money goes.

The solution is simple: track your expenses and write down where you spend every penny. For convenience, you can break down all expenses into categories: food, entertainment, clothing, household chemicals, transport, major purchases, utility bills and so on.

You can use one of the applications to control personal finances. For the same purposes, both a regular notepad and a spreadsheet on a laptop are suitable. No matter which tool you choose, the goal is the same: record your spending every day, sort it into categories, and analyze it to see which categories you overspend.

Such a revision of spending is almost always a discovery for a person. Think carefully about the categories of expenses that hit you the most. Were these purchases really that important to you? Probably not. What expenses or specific monthly purchases can you completely cut out? At least there are a few of them for sure.

8. Automatically transfer money to a savings account

There is one famous old rule - pay yourself first. This means that the first thing you should do is pay off your debts and save money for the future, and only then decide how to live on the remaining amount.

The easiest way to stick to this rule is to automate the process. As soon as the salary arrives on the card, immediately transfer 10% to your savings account. If your bank has such a service, make sure that utility bills and loans can also be paid immediately.

The more operations you can do on the machine, the better.

9. Ask close friends and family for help

A trusted circle of friends and family members can be very helpful when it comes to personal change, which includes gaining financial self-control.

At the very least, they can give you a very helpful tips that suit your situation and the qualities you have. They know you. They know almost everything about your affairs, and sometimes even better than you.

In addition, it is always great if there is a person nearby who cares about you, provides support in a difficult moment. Just talk to someone when things start to change in your life. It's great motivating.

Also, your friends and family can be great role models. Perhaps you have a friend who has reached the same financial goals that you are planning to achieve. Use him as a guide to follow the same path. Learn from his experience.

10. Don't give up when things don't work out.

You can make a mistake once or twice when planning your expenses. You can buy something without thinking. You can make a purchase that you will later regret. You may think that self-control is not about you at all and you should not even start.

Do not worry. Financial progress is the story of two steps forward and at least one step back.

The goal is to strive to be better than you were before. If you make a mistake, don't dwell on it. Instead, understand the reasons for your behavior and try to avoid it in the future.

How to properly manage your money, and what mistakes are usually made when planning expenses - we give practical advice to manage their budget.

Managing a personal budget when a person lives alone is already quite a difficult task, and family budget planning is an art that needs to be learned. All people know that the family budget must be planned, but few people know how to do it. In this article you will find practical tips on how to manage family budget and learn about the main mistakes of such planning.

Where does the money go?

Every month you try to put aside from your salary to collect your child for school, for a joint vacation with your family, for repairs, but the money still flows like sand through your fingers? Are you trying to figure out why this is happening, but you can't find the ends? Remember: money loves an account.

Keep track of income and expenses: you can make notes in a notebook or create a simple spreadsheet in Excel. This will lead to an understanding of the real financial situation, where your money goes, what expenses are mandatory and which are optional.

Here are a few common mistakes that we do with our money:

We do not create an airbag;
we do not keep records of income and expenses;
We make spontaneous purchases without thinking about the future.

Mandatory expenses are the purchase of food, housing and utilities, expenses for travel tickets, child education, loan debts. These costs need to be calculated and included in your monthly budget. Funds must be spent strictly for these purposes. Accordingly, all other expenses are optional, such as going to the cinema and cafes, visiting a hairdresser, buying clothes, going on vacation, and so on. Here you need to be more careful with them. Ideally, no more than 20% of your monthly income should go to secondary purchases.

Let's say your income is 40,000 rubles. Let's try to distribute it.

Effective management of personal and family budget

Family budget planning begins with managing personal income and expenses. Beginning family life- it is better to do this at the very beginning, then it will be more difficult to reorganize - you should immediately agree on how you will plan the overall budget. Note that this is important not only for your material well-being, but also has a psychological meaning: by agreeing who will keep records of your joint income and expenses, and what is the contribution of each to the “piggy bank”, you will avoid quarrels in the family on this topic. This rule is completely in vain, many neglect.

Thus, couples thinking about how to properly manage the family budget should understand that it is important to separate the roles and contributions of each spouse, decide how you will manage the budget: jointly, separately or in shares. There is also an option full content family of one of the spouses.

Take note that when planning a budget, it is imperative to calculate all actual income, this includes not only the salary of the spouses, but also, for example, money for rented housing, related earnings, etc. Proceed from the position: “I will take into account only income from the main work ”is fundamentally wrong - this way you will only get confused.

Let's take a look at one of possible schemes distribution of funds:

60% - basic expenses, food and monthly household expenses;
10% - savings that will be spent on holidays or major purchases;
10% - savings with a long-term perspective (accounts for the education of children, pensions, etc.);
10% – recreational activities and pleasure;
10% - miscellaneous, unplanned expenses.

Let's go back to our practical example and try to complete the distribution:

It turns out that 65% of our income goes to obligatory expenses. We'll have to save on something unnecessary.

With this approach, for a year you will save 43,200 rubles for vacation. This is quite good!
It is not necessary to go this route. There are many such schemes. You can choose the most suitable for your family or even create your own.

What do you need to plan and calculate the family budget?

data from previous months. In order to get them, you need to keep track of the budget.
You need to know about events that require money in the near future (birthdays, going to the doctor, vacation, etc.).
Seasonality must be taken into account. For example, in autumn, the costs for schoolchildren and students increase. In December, expenses for the celebration of the new year and gifts for relatives are coming.

1. Start treating the family budget correctly.
Realize for yourself the reason why you decided to run it: for example, you want to cut costs by 10% or save up for repairs. Don't do it just because it's necessary.

2. Don't overload your family budget table with details.
The plate should indicate the main items of income and expenses, for example, how much was spent on food, and not separately on bread, sausage, etc. Planning should be devoted to exactly as much time as necessary, otherwise it gets boring. Therefore, minimum effort - maximum results.

3. Try to cut large expenses, not save on small things.
As the folk wisdom says: "Having drunk on vodka, you will not save on matches." In other words: if you spent a lot, say, on buying a fur coat in the summer, it makes no sense to take half measures in the form of "savings" on the purchase toilet paper another brand. At the same time, there is no real reduction in costs, and the sediment will remain. Therefore, analyze the larger items of your expenses and reduce them without losing comfort for life. Here the rule applies: 20% of efforts give 80% of the result.

4. Open a savings account, best of all a funded deposit with no early withdrawal option. Send all the money from the "Savings" article there.

5. Be realistic about your goals.
Let's be honest: planning can be difficult at first and not immediately addictive, so it's better to set small, achievable goals that will motivate you to move on than to decide to make a million in a couple of months, come up with nothing, and abandon planning.

6. Don't be afraid to rethink your budgeting approach, even if it requires radical changes.
Be flexible, because there are no set numbers once and for all. We are changing, we earn more, we spend more, so the budget needs to be rethought.

Money for a rainy day

It is better that such days never come, but there are risks in life when you suddenly need money to fix a car, for expensive treatment, or in case one of the spouses has lost their job. It is better to foresee these force majeure expenses in advance and prepare a "safety cushion". The amount of the pillow is added up as follows: the amount of monthly income is multiplied by 3.

If we return to our example, then it is 120,000 rubles. (40,000 rubles x3). Set aside "for a rainy day" until this amount is accumulated.

When such a “reserve fund” is created, it is possible to increase the contribution to the articles “Entertainment” or “Savings for large purchases” (an apartment, a car or a trip).

How to plan and enjoy it?

Many people mistakenly associate budget planning with a complete rejection of life's pleasures when we are talking It's just about setting priorities. The quality of life with proper financial management, on the contrary, should increase. By learning how to properly manage the family budget, you will see how much money is left to spend on yourself or on common pleasures. In addition, the released money can even be made to work for yourself, increasing your profits: these are deposits, bills, mutual funds And so on.

Cost control will gradually become a habit and be taken for granted. Moreover, family budget planning can increase the comfort of life and ensure your financial well-being. Plus, planning a family budget teaches you financial discipline, and this, in turn, guarantees that you will never be left without a penny in your pocket. And it remains only to enjoy the positive results.

Today is a difficult time that prompts us to change our own behavior, especially in the field of finance. It is better to do it right today, because tomorrow you will finally cease to understand where exactly your money is going. Yes, even now, I think, you are poorly versed in this, because you don’t have any serious savings, which means there are no opportunities.

But we are sure that there is always an opportunity to get out of such difficulties. To do this, first of all, we need to pump the skill of money management. And for this we decided to turn to the creator - Anton Fedosin, who is also an ideological follower of the philosophy proper handling with money.

A bit of history

Our service is actually six years old. He started his work in 2010. At first, Zen money did not bring any income - we did not even set ourselves such a goal. And there was no way to make money on software, no one was going to pay for it at that time. Everyone started with free access, and then tried to achieve financial returns through advertising additional services. Initially, we positioned ourselves as a free solution to financial problems and quietly tried to grow our audience.

Growing at that time did not work. For many reasons. For example, people were afraid to enter financial information somewhere on the Internet, applications that use cloud storage. The first question that our clients always asked us was: “How is it? Will I enter my personal data into your service? What if you get hacked and all this leaks somewhere?
But several years have passed, and everyone has personal mail, which, just, lies in the cloud, in addition to it, a lot of other information is stored there, and nothing happens to it. At one point, people ceased to be interested in this issue and fears were gone. Then we decided to restart the project, making the service paid. This decision turned out to be correct.
Wherein basic part The application is still free, our paid package is "Premium". Recently, not without the influence of the crisis, we have an order of magnitude more users.

money management

If we talk about methods of cost control, then there are different approaches that can be radically different from each other. There is a classic when a person makes a general budget. That is, he plans something for each category of goods: for food, for utilities, for travel, etc.
There is a simpler approach called "four envelopes". The income for the month is divided into four envelopes, one per week. The bottom line is that the weekly period is more tangible and it is much easier to fit into the weekly limit than into the monthly one.


However, many years of experience forced us to stop at a fairly simple and working approach. It works like this - mandatory payments, optional payments and savings. The mechanism is really not complicated. When you receive a salary, you must immediately set aside a certain amount of money, and distribute the rest into two categories. The simplest formula is suitable for people who have an average or low income (live from paycheck to paycheck) - we save 20%, leave 50% for obligatory expenses and 30% we spend on our loved ones - on travel, new phone, friends, bowling, cafes and restaurants. Today we adjust all decisions to this formula.

Zen money does not just keep track of expenses and income, it sets itself the goal of guiding a person, changing his financial behavior so that he is sure to save money. We cultivate, in general, a very good habit.

I myself approach the issue of financial management more as a researcher, since I have been doing this for so many years. When I find new methodology, I try it on myself, I live by it for a while. To date, the 50/20/30 system has proven to be the most effective for me.

Automation

Our application contains several distinguishing features which we are very proud of.
For example, for Android users, the application can recognize banking SMS and automatically create transactions.

We currently support this feature for 300 banks. That is, you do not need to enter information manually - everything is automated. Unfortunately, this is not possible on iOS. The fact is that third party application, according to policy Apple, does not have access to SMS. But we got around this problem - we import data directly from the Internet bank. For this to work, you need to specify your bank, enter your login and password, and then just use the fruits of automation.

The password itself is not transmitted anywhere, it remains only on the phone, is in an encrypted storage and is retrieved from there only at the moment when you log into the system. Of course, to ensure security, you will have to enter the usual confirmation SMS at the entrance.

There is another automation option - recognition of email notifications about operations. But there are few banks in Russia that support alerts via email. We know about seven such banks.

And then there is electronic money. They have open APIs through which you can get information about transactions without any problems.

Personal space and security

We have a family account that allows you to create a separate login for each person. At the same time, we understand that anonymity, even in the family, is far from useless, and therefore personal accounts are not visible to other users.

Other people's personal accounts are not visible when adding regular expenses. But, when you need to make a transfer (for example, a husband gives money to his wife or vice versa), then you can select the wife's account and transfer money to her account.
You can see general reports on all family accounts, but you can’t go down to transactions on personal accounts, which saves everyone’s personal space.

Philosophy Zen

This type of application, like ours, is called home bookkeeping. But we do not consider ourselves to be such, and I will explain why. Home accounting is, first of all, “posthumous” accounting. That is, when something happened, you recorded it and all you can do is look at the data on how it happened. View some reports and draw conclusions.
What we are doing has a completely different purpose. We want to create a financial assistant that can help you look into the future and predict it. Our methodology is based not on an analysis of what happened, but on forecasts and recommendations of what might happen.

To do this, today we are doing two things. If you open our application, you will see a screen with different widgets. They just help to look to the future. They give recommendations on what needs to be done to get better - now or in the near future.
In addition, we run bots. First of all in Telegram. Their goal is to inform you in time about the current situation, about what you need to do today, how much you need to save in order to stick to the plan, according to your income. And this thing will prompt you almost every day, depending on how much you need it.

Almost all over the world people interact with money. We work, we receive a salary, and then most people drain this money absolutely inefficiently. They just go nowhere. And the person remains at the same level at which he was. But with the right approach to money management, you can achieve high results.

And there are people who do not plan - they just react to what comes to them. With money, the story is the same, they can be really and effectively managed, but only a small part of the population can do this. For the wealthy section of our society, this business is handled by individuals - they have asset managers. Our task is to introduce these money management techniques into the lives of ordinary people.

In this article, I will tell you how to learn to manage money. Watching what people write about their budget and personal finance, I noticed that many would like to learn how to manage finances, but do not know how to approach this, where to start, what to do for this. Therefore, I hope that this publication will be a good guide for such people, and will allow them to get this important business off the ground.

So how do you learn to manage money? The very first and most important thing: you need to forget the word "money" and move on to the concept of "finance". Finance is a much broader concept than money, so when it comes to management, you need to use it: “management of personal finances”, and not “management of personal money”. For more information on the difference between these concepts, I recommend reading the articles:

The second article even has a very visual diagram that clearly demonstrates this difference: remember it, without it you will not be able to learn how to manage money.

Since many are frightened by unfamiliar and not entirely clear terms (such as “finance”), in this article I will use the more familiar “money” to you, and I also named the article using this term, since people more often ask search engines just such request. Only for this reason, or rather, I emphasize once again, to talk about finances.

Also, to make it as accessible and understandable as possible, I will draw an analogy with a simple and understandable example for everyone. In the article, I have already compared building a personal finance system with building a house, and today, speaking about how to manage money, I want to compare financial management with driving a car.

So, imagine a person who has never driven a car in his life, and has not even watched how others drive the car. Of course, driving a car for such a person is a “dark forest”: something unknown and even frightening. Nevertheless, a person sees how many people around drive cars, driving confidently and professionally enough, and understands that this can be learned, even if at first such a prospect is frightening.

Is the initial inability to drive a reason to refuse to buy a car and receive all the benefits associated with having it? Not! Therefore, a person sets a goal for himself and begins to learn driving so that he will be better in the future. For this, he is ready to overcome his initial fears.

Rule number 1. If you don't know how to manage money, don't be afraid to learn it. This is a very important and vital skill, having mastered it, you will definitely be able to change your life for the better, perhaps even very significantly.

How does one start learning to drive? Before getting behind the wheel, he comes to a driving school and begins to study the theory - the rules traffic. Without knowing these rules, getting behind the wheel is extremely dangerous, moreover, the threat is created not only for yourself, but also for those around you. In financial management, everything is exactly the same.

Rule number 2. Learn how to manage finances theoretical foundations. This can be done with the help of literature, seminars, trainings, Internet resources. Please, the site is always at your service in this regard: everything is free, accessible and “sorted”.

What happens to a novice motorist who has already mastered the theory (even if he knows it perfectly - he has learned all the traffic rules by heart) and gets behind the wheel for the first time? It's very difficult for him! Regardless of theoretical knowledge. He drives very slowly, very carefully, nervous, frightened, confuses levers and pedals, makes many mistakes. Is it normal? Of course yes! As in any new business, it is difficult to do without “stuffing bumps”. But next to the novice driver there is always an experienced instructor who prompts him, gives advice and recommendations. At the same time, the steering wheel is still in the hands of the driver: the instructor will not be able to steer for him.

Rule number 3. The first steps in managing personal finances will be very slow, cautious, inept. This is fine! Pretty soon you will feel more confident in this matter. And it is very good if there is a more experienced mentor next to you who will help you with advice and recommendations. For example, on this site, I always do this in the comments and on the forum.

After some time driving a car (at different people this time can be different, usually from several weeks to several months), the motorist begins to feel the first self-confidence. He sees that he is already quite able to drive a car without too much fuss and misunderstanding. And at this moment it is very important not to overestimate your strength, not to lose the much-needed caution on the roads, not to accelerate too fast so that this does not lead to sad consequences. When it comes to how to manage money, everything is exactly the same.

Rule number 4. Feeling the first success in managing money, do not lose your vigilance and do not neglect the theoretical ones that you have studied. This can lead to serious negative consequences.

And then some more time passes, and the driver of the car generally stops thinking about how to drive the car: he performs all actions automatically. If at first he frantically clutched at the gearbox, buttons and switches, now he does not think at all what and how to press, doing all this on full automatic. It's the same with money management.

Rule number 5. At a certain point, you will stop thinking about how to manage money altogether: you will do it automatically, just like washing your hands before eating or brushing your teeth. Financial management will fit tightly into your usual rhythm of life.

When a person reaches perfection in driving a car, he does not think about the process of driving a car, but still there are some points that he must think over every time he gets behind the wheel and drives a car. There are three such moments:

1. The route of movement (a person must know where and how he is going to go).
2. Control over the traffic situation (while driving, the driver must be vigilant, monitor the traffic situation and respond quickly to threats).
3. Correction of the route in case of force majeure circumstances (if somewhere along the way the road is blocked or a large traffic jam has formed, you need to adjust your route).

The same is true in financial management.

That, in fact, is all. Let me emphasize again:

If you do not know how to manage money, learning this is not a problem - what is important is the desire and awareness that this is necessary. And this is true. And even if at first something seems complicated and inconvenient to you, then in the near future you will perform the same actions, and most importantly, think in the right categories, like a financially literate person, on full automatic, financial management will enter your everyday life.

That's all for me. If you decide to learn how to manage money, stay among the regular readers of the Financial Genius, study the proposed materials, ask questions in the comments, chat on our forum, where many share their real practical experience. This will definitely benefit you. See you soon!