Personal Home Budget
Calculator and Interactive Analysis
Examples – Tutorial

Troubled Tom sits down at his computer to use the personal home budget program. He has a good job, a nice girlfriend, a super apartment, hot car; everything seems great except his credit card balances keep increasing and he can’t seem to figure out why. Tom starts by bringing out his most recent banking statement and credit card statements that encompass the same period as the bank statement. My favorite way to approach this budget process, (since those of you reading this get the advantage of reading this tutorial,) will be to stop and sit back a moment. Answer the question about projected expenses. Don’t open your statements or mark anything down yet; this relates more to attaining a personal understanding of what the true picture of your financial life may be at the end of the personal budget analysis process and how this true picture may differ from your original ideas about the budget.

Tom thinks about his financial life and budget. He figures he spends about $2500 each month and that he should be saving $500. Tom enters $2500 into the 4^th lines down, projected expenses, and also writes the number down on a piece of paper to remind him later of what he thought. Tom makes $3000 per month at his job, he pays $1100 per month on his apartment, car payment $700, $50 utilities, almost that much again on other stuff, he thinks he has a good feel for what he spends.

Now let’s follow with Tom through the program. Start with the check book. Look at the dates for the statement you are using. Those are the dates you will use for all analysis, but consistent. If you have more than one bank account pick one set of dates and use the same dates, that may result in needing to use two statements from other accounts to get the range of dates and require some estimating, just do the best you can. understand how to use the program, have another window or tab with the personal home budget page open and enter the numbers as the tutorial instructs: