Can you imagine a corporate entity operating without a Budget? The truth is that most of us live our lives from paycheque to paycheque. How many times have you withdrawn money from the bank and two days after you are searching for spare change? Be honest, more than you care to admit I am sure. A budget is the “road” that will lead us towards financial independence.

Expenses
The first step: we need to write down our monthly expenses. Ideally this should be done at-least yearly, however once your budget is up and running it could be more frequent. Ensure that you write down all your expenditure, no matter how insignificant it may seems. Next organise them into categories, such as utilities, food, insurance, rent, gas, health and so on.

Income
Write down all the income that you currently earn, for most people this may only be an after-tax paycheque. Other sources of income may be rental income, investment income, predictable bonuses, retirement income and gifts/remittances from our parents or our children. Convert to monthly equivalent if necessary.

It's always interesting to see how few sources of income streams there are compared to expenses.

Now you know how much you earn and spend on a monthly basis. Are you spending more than you thought? In most cases we do, and probably more than we earn (Credit Card to the rescue!). We are now faced with two choices; we can spend less or earn more.

Ideally, we'd love a combination of the two but realistically, it means getting rid of some of those unnecessary expenses and limiting others. You will be surprised how much income you can save from this process without changing your lifestyle.

Yours truly,

Tactical Asset Management, Inc.
phone: (306) 757-2121
fax: (306) 347-3655
e-mail: inquiry@tacticalassetmgmt.com
website: www.tacticalassetmgmt.com