Easily Build a Budgeting Plan

By Philip R. Rest

How often do you wish you had more money? With more money, you can afford more of the things you want to have and need to you. If you make a solid budgeting plan, you will be able to manage your money more carefully. With correct money management, this is how you actually save more and afford the things you want.

In order to devise a budgeting plan, you need to begin by recording all of your fixed expenses for the month. This includes your rent or mortgage, any kind of insurance, phone, cable, Internet access, trash, etc. Fixed expenses stay the same month in and month out.

Once you have all your fixed expenses written out, add them up. Now you need to write down your variable expenses. These may include but are not limited to gas, electricity, water, food, entertainment, eating out, etc. Variable expenses, unlike fixed expenses, do not remain the same from month to month. They change and are harder to estimate exactly.

When you add together your fixed expenses and variable expenses you end up with your estimated expenses for the month. This is how much money you need to live for a month. Now you need to add together your income. Obviously, if you just have one job and one salary, there isn’t anything to add together, but if you have a second job or other sources of income such as interest income or investment income, you need to add all of this together.

Now you need to look at your expenses and income. Compare them together to see which is bigger. Is the income larger? If so, you should have savings. If you don’t, you probably estimated income and/or expenses wrong. Adjust them accordingly. If your expenses larger? If so, you are probably going into debt. This is not good and is the point of budgeting. If you’re going into debt we can help you fix it.

The next thing you need to figure out is the amount you want to save and invest. This could be saving for an emergency fund, retirement, college funds, etc. Figure out a general number and add it to your estimated expenses for the month. If your income is not large enough for this number, you need to cut down on your expenses.

Let’s begin with your fixed expenses. Try to get your bills down by negotiating. Then, move on to your very own senses. You can usually save allowed variable expenses by cutting out anything you don’t need and cutting back on things that you can lower.

Keep adjusting your expenses and numbers until your income equals your expenses plus savings needs. Once you have this, just folly but you are not. I will be honest and say that it’s probably the hardest part, but it’s the most beneficial also. - 23687

About the Author:

Budgeting doesn’t have to be complicated and tedious. Make living on a budget as simple and easy as ever.

Easily Build a Budgeting Plan

By Philip R. Rest

How often do you wish you had more money? With more money, you can afford more of the things you want to have and need to you. If you make a solid budgeting plan, you will be able to manage your money more carefully. With correct money management, this is how you actually save more and afford the things you want.

In order to devise a budgeting plan, you need to begin by recording all of your fixed expenses for the month. This includes your rent or mortgage, any kind of insurance, phone, cable, Internet access, trash, etc. Fixed expenses stay the same month in and month out.

Once you have all your fixed expenses written out, add them up. Now you need to write down your variable expenses. These may include but are not limited to gas, electricity, water, food, entertainment, eating out, etc. Variable expenses, unlike fixed expenses, do not remain the same from month to month. They change and are harder to estimate exactly.

When you add together your fixed expenses and variable expenses you end up with your estimated expenses for the month. This is how much money you need to live for a month. Now you need to add together your income. Obviously, if you just have one job and one salary, there isn’t anything to add together, but if you have a second job or other sources of income such as interest income or investment income, you need to add all of this together.

Now you need to look at your expenses and income. Compare them together to see which is bigger. Is the income larger? If so, you should have savings. If you don’t, you probably estimated income and/or expenses wrong. Adjust them accordingly. If your expenses larger? If so, you are probably going into debt. This is not good and is the point of budgeting. If you’re going into debt we can help you fix it.

The next thing you need to figure out is the amount you want to save and invest. This could be saving for an emergency fund, retirement, college funds, etc. Figure out a general number and add it to your estimated expenses for the month. If your income is not large enough for this number, you need to cut down on your expenses.

Let’s begin with your fixed expenses. Try to get your bills down by negotiating. Then, move on to your very own senses. You can usually save allowed variable expenses by cutting out anything you don’t need and cutting back on things that you can lower.

Keep adjusting your expenses and numbers until your income equals your expenses plus savings needs. Once you have this, just folly but you are not. I will be honest and say that it’s probably the hardest part, but it’s the most beneficial also. - 23687

About the Author:

Budgeting doesn’t have to be complicated and tedious. Make living on a budget as simple and easy as ever.

Easily Build a Budgeting Plan

By Philip R. Rest

How often do you wish you had more money? With more money, you can afford more of the things you want to have and need to you. If you make a solid budgeting plan, you will be able to manage your money more carefully. With correct money management, this is how you actually save more and afford the things you want.

In order to devise a budgeting plan, you need to begin by recording all of your fixed expenses for the month. This includes your rent or mortgage, any kind of insurance, phone, cable, Internet access, trash, etc. Fixed expenses stay the same month in and month out.

Once you have all your fixed expenses written out, add them up. Now you need to write down your variable expenses. These may include but are not limited to gas, electricity, water, food, entertainment, eating out, etc. Variable expenses, unlike fixed expenses, do not remain the same from month to month. They change and are harder to estimate exactly.

When you add together your fixed expenses and variable expenses you end up with your estimated expenses for the month. This is how much money you need to live for a month. Now you need to add together your income. Obviously, if you just have one job and one salary, there isn’t anything to add together, but if you have a second job or other sources of income such as interest income or investment income, you need to add all of this together.

Now you need to look at your expenses and income. Compare them together to see which is bigger. Is the income larger? If so, you should have savings. If you don’t, you probably estimated income and/or expenses wrong. Adjust them accordingly. If your expenses larger? If so, you are probably going into debt. This is not good and is the point of budgeting. If you’re going into debt we can help you fix it.

The next thing you need to figure out is the amount you want to save and invest. This could be saving for an emergency fund, retirement, college funds, etc. Figure out a general number and add it to your estimated expenses for the month. If your income is not large enough for this number, you need to cut down on your expenses.

Let’s begin with your fixed expenses. Try to get your bills down by negotiating. Then, move on to your very own senses. You can usually save allowed variable expenses by cutting out anything you don’t need and cutting back on things that you can lower.

Keep adjusting your expenses and numbers until your income equals your expenses plus savings needs. Once you have this, just folly but you are not. I will be honest and say that it’s probably the hardest part, but it’s the most beneficial also. - 23687

About the Author:

Budgeting doesn’t have to be complicated and tedious. Make living on a budget as simple and easy as ever.

Easily Build a Budgeting Plan

By Philip R. Rest

How often do you wish you had more money? With more money, you can afford more of the things you want to have and need to you. If you make a solid budgeting plan, you will be able to manage your money more carefully. With correct money management, this is how you actually save more and afford the things you want.

In order to devise a budgeting plan, you need to begin by recording all of your fixed expenses for the month. This includes your rent or mortgage, any kind of insurance, phone, cable, Internet access, trash, etc. Fixed expenses stay the same month in and month out.

Once you have all your fixed expenses written out, add them up. Now you need to write down your variable expenses. These may include but are not limited to gas, electricity, water, food, entertainment, eating out, etc. Variable expenses, unlike fixed expenses, do not remain the same from month to month. They change and are harder to estimate exactly.

When you add together your fixed expenses and variable expenses you end up with your estimated expenses for the month. This is how much money you need to live for a month. Now you need to add together your income. Obviously, if you just have one job and one salary, there isn’t anything to add together, but if you have a second job or other sources of income such as interest income or investment income, you need to add all of this together.

Now you need to look at your expenses and income. Compare them together to see which is bigger. Is the income larger? If so, you should have savings. If you don’t, you probably estimated income and/or expenses wrong. Adjust them accordingly. If your expenses larger? If so, you are probably going into debt. This is not good and is the point of budgeting. If you’re going into debt we can help you fix it.

The next thing you need to figure out is the amount you want to save and invest. This could be saving for an emergency fund, retirement, college funds, etc. Figure out a general number and add it to your estimated expenses for the month. If your income is not large enough for this number, you need to cut down on your expenses.

Let’s begin with your fixed expenses. Try to get your bills down by negotiating. Then, move on to your very own senses. You can usually save allowed variable expenses by cutting out anything you don’t need and cutting back on things that you can lower.

Keep adjusting your expenses and numbers until your income equals your expenses plus savings needs. Once you have this, just folly but you are not. I will be honest and say that it’s probably the hardest part, but it’s the most beneficial also. - 23687

About the Author:

Budgeting doesn’t have to be complicated and tedious. Make living on a budget as simple and easy as ever.

Quotable Blog Quotes #8

Quotable Quotes From Around the Blogosphere

Gottesdienst Online
Pastor Larry Beane

Of course, the Christian life can’t be accurately measured any more than grace can. You can no more judge how “successful” a congregation’s evangelism is by conducting headcounts than you can tell which wafer has been consecrated and which one has not by observing both under a microscope. But such pragmatism and empiricism are the American way. McDonald’s used to boast on their signs about how many burgers had been served (quantity), while no mention was made regarding how salutary the food was to the body (quality), or the faithfulness of the local franchise to the vision of the owner (fidelity to the mission).

…Instead of finding our identity in the ancient marble font filled with water and marked by the cross, we are moving more toward being branded with a disposable multicolored cardboard box containing super-sized junk food and bearing a Luther bobblehead. In other words, Ablaze exchanges the meat of the Gospel for an “unhappy meal” of grease, cheese, sugar, and cheap plastic trinkets marketed by appeals to the secular culture. All that’s missing is changing the apostolic greeting from “The Lord be with you” to “Do you want fries with that?”

Father Hollywood
Pastor Larry Beane

The messed up cake reminded me of the botched ordination I attended in which the ordaining pastor simply read the words out of the book without regard to the parts that were rubrical instruction: “I ordain and consecrate you into the office of the holy ministry of the one holy catholic I. E. Christian and apostolic church,” missing the point that he wasn’t supposed to read the part in brackets: [i.e. Christian] - which is itself a silly rubric put in place to “clarify” to Lutherans that they are Lutherans. In the end, it wasn’t really helpful - at least to the assistant district vice president who was conducting the ordination. One more argument against our synod’s Dumbed Down Pastor Program (which for some reason is abbreviated SMP and not DDPP).

Weedon's Blog
Pastor Wil Weedon

The reason most often behind folks not liking the liturgy, I suspect, is that they don’t like the Word of God that is embodied therein; they sense in it something alien, foreign, even threatening. Best steer clear of it. MOST foreign is that it doesn’t pander to what they like. In fact, it treats “what I like” as completely irrelevant and the impulse to demand “what I like” as something that needs to die.

Quicunque vult…
Deaconess Emily Carder

Deaconess Carder describes the wonder of her elementary school students regarding their beautifully renovated chancel:

On this day they were standing near the communion rail, entranced by every word coming from pastor's mouth. They were asking questions, "What is that for?;" "What do we have that up there?"; "What does this symbol mean?"; and finally, the great catechetical question of God's children,"What is this? " Pastor was answering each one, making the link to Christ. They didn't want to stop, and not merely because they wanted to miss Math classes. They wanted more of Jesus.

People can argue, as they did with Jesus (Mk 14:4-5), "These are hard times. Money is tough. Why do you spend it on luxury when it should be spent on the poor?" The answer is simple. It was spent on the poor. It was spent on the poor in spirit so that they might have more Jesus.

This is the highest reason we adorn churches. It is not for the sake of puffery, for making ourselves look grand. It is so the great catechetical question is asked, "What is this?" and it can be answered through Christ. Bread of heaven given; bread received.

That Lutheran Guy
Jim

Another thing that really takes me back [to times when things were different] is Luther’s language. Luther had a lawyers gift for rhetorical flourish. Today he would be so politically incorrect and offensive he would require his own team of ACLU attorneys to keep him out of jail just for being himself. Luther would have a hard time with today’s idolatrous worship of pluralism, tolerance and diversity. Luther was a warrior for truth and let the chips fall where they may. Since I read him in English translation, I wonder just how bowdlerized the English speaking pastors who translated these sermons rendered some of what he said. As Nicolas Cage’s character Ben Gates said in National Treasure, “People don’t talk that way anymore.”

Outer Rim Territories
Seminarian Christopher Gillespie quoting Cantor Sean

…Maybe congregations don't want their pastor to be their slave. Maybe congregations don't want Christ to serve them? It seems clear to me that any pastor who insists on the historic liturgy, especially when they insist on the many ceremonies that accompany it, is willfully and intentionally asking to be shackled. To be bound and chained to Christ and His cross, and stripped of their own glory. They don vestments that hide themselves, showing only the Office they hold. They do not choose their own words, but instead speak only Christ's Words. Their Benediction, Pax, and Verba are not their own, but are Christ's. They may not speak their own comforting words, no matter how deeply they as individuals care for their parishioners. They speak only the comforting Words of Christ…

Weedon's Blog
Pastor Wil Weedon

Irritated
Yes, irritated. Today was our Spring SID Pastoral Conference. Among the things that I found irritating:

The Synod’s CCM has apparently declared our SID convention resolution declining to participate into that money pit “Fan into Flame” as null and void.

Global Hoteliers Look to China, India and The Middle East for Growth

As the recession bites, global hoteliers are looking to the east’s underserved leisure markets. It will take time because of barriers to entry. For most, this target for now takes up only a small fraction of overall business.

China, the world’s fastest-growing economy, is expected to expand 6.5 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. That’s a slowdown from 9 percent growth last year but way ahead of the 2.8 percent contraction forecast for the United States in 2009.

Find out what U.S. based Marriott, Starwood, Intercontinental Hotels and France-based Accor are doing to go after a slice of the global pie — here.

Global Hoteliers Look to China, India and The Middle East for Growth

As the recession bites, global hoteliers are looking to the east’s underserved leisure markets. It will take time because of barriers to entry. For most, this target for now takes up only a small fraction of overall business.

China, the world’s fastest-growing economy, is expected to expand 6.5 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. That’s a slowdown from 9 percent growth last year but way ahead of the 2.8 percent contraction forecast for the United States in 2009.

Find out what U.S. based Marriott, Starwood, Intercontinental Hotels and France-based Accor are doing to go after a slice of the global pie — here.