Budget

Creating and sticking to a budget might not be your idea of fun, but it can help you control your spending so you CAN have fun without getting into money trouble.  If you don't have much money coming in, don't worry—following a budget CAN still allow you to have some small luxuries, even if it is the occasional soda or movie. 

1. The first step towards creating a budget is listing all of your recurring monthly expenses, such as rent, tuition, groceries, phone bill, cable, car payment, gas, insurance, entertainment costs, clothes, stuff for hobbies, etc.

2. Next total your monthly income including wages from work (not including overtime) and financial aid money left over for living expenses.  Calculate your monthly financial aid by dividing the total amount by the number of months in your semester.

3. Than, take your overall expenses total and subtract expenses from your income.  There may not be anything left over, or it could be a negative number.  Based on the results, examine each item in your budget and decide if you could cut back in any areas.  However, if there is any money left, it would be prudent to move this money into savings or an emergency fund in case you run into unexpected expenses. Use the online savings calculator to see how maintaining a savings account can come in handy. 

Congratulations, you've created a budget and taken the first step to getting control of your money. 

Now for the tough part—

4. Find out if your spending matches your budget.  Tracking expenses and comparing them to your budget will allow you to get control over your monthly spending, allowing you to keep student loan debt, as well as other types of debt, at a reasonable level or non-existent, especially while you are in college. 

There are a number of ways to track your spending, such as writing down expenses in your checkbook or creating a spreadsheet and recording your purchases.  If you are comfortable letting technology do some of the work for you, you can use an application like www.buxfer.com, which allows you to import your bank and credit card information and assign tags to each purchase.  This method will save time in recording expenses and let you know how much you've spent for the month, although you will have to enter cash transactions manually.  

If you follow these steps, you should be able to get control over your money and feel good when you spend money or free some cash to get out of debt quickly.