Saving money is all about creating financial security for the future for you and your family. Whether you want to save for retirement, a vacation, or simply create a nest egg for your kids, there are plenty of helpful tips you can use to help you reach your financial goals.

For many, the goal of saving money is to avoid accruing additional debt and become more financially independent. And there are many choices you can make today to make for a better, more fiscally secure tomorrow.

A personal budget can help you manage your money more responsibly so that you can pay your bills, save for the future, and reduce debt. 

When you have a budget, you know exactly where your money is going. You can use it to improve the way you spend your money and optimize your savings and investments.

Best Budget Planning Tools

There are a few personal financial planning tools you can use to help categorize your expenditures and build better spending (and saving!) habits:

• Google Sheets or Excel: These spreadsheet apps come with monthly budget planner templates to build a budget that makes sense for your savings goals. What’s more, these apps do all the math for you, and if you use the templates, the formulas are already there!

• Mint from Intuit: From the same folks that created TurboTax and Quickbooks comes Mint, a free monthly budget planner in a handy smartphone app. It connects to your bank accounts to automatically track categorized expenses and show how well you’re sticking to your budget. 

• You Need a Budget (YNAB): This paid app provides in-depth, educational personal finance and budgeting content in addition to a real-time-updated budget tool. You can link your accounts and set specific savings and spending goals. Plus, it provides plenty of reports with clear visualizations to show you how well you’re managing your money according to your goals.

• Goodbudget: This paid online tool allows you to categorize your expenses and savings goals into “envelopes” where your money would be “stored.” You have to manually input all of the amounts, which forces you to really think about how you’re spending money (which may be a wakeup call for some). It can also show you how your real-life spending impacts your budget.

• A finance planner: Many small banks and credit unions hire finance planning professionals who can help you build a personalized budget that can help you reach your savings and investment goals. Some institutions even offer this service for free. 

How to Create a Budget

Creating budget guidelines may seem like a daunting task at first. However, there are a few tips you can use to ease into the process and reduce the stress of analyzing your finances.

• Gather all income sources. Input all of your sources of income, including your paychecks and passive income like investment returns, small business ventures, or spousal/child support payments. If you’re creating a family budget, you should include the paychecks and passive income for every earning member, such as your spouse and/or parents.

• List your monthly expenses. Consider separating your expenses into categories, such as “Utilities,” “Debts,” and “Savings.” Then, input the figures for all known “fixed” expenses, such as rent/mortgage payments, car payments, insurance, streaming services and subscriptions. Then, create estimated figures for fluctuating “varied” expenses, like groceries, gas, and certain utility bills.

• Add up your income and expenses. Calculate the total amounts for income, and then calculate your current total expenses. Subtract total expenses from total income to get the leftover.

Play with the numbers. Adjust flexible figures, like miscellaneous and “want” expenses as needed. If you don’t already have a savings goal, try to adjust the numbers so that you can save a certain amount every month.