by Emerson

Created on: July 13, 2008

Ok, so we are all done with college and ready for a real job, an apartment, or even to move in with our first real boyfriend. Usually you have to start somewhere and 90% of the time that is at the bottom of the rung with a pretty hefty student loan to pay off. What your parents had been doing for years, being able to pay the bills, put food in the fridge, and maybe even buy you a little present did not just happen, it takes practice. You are just beginning that phase so readily named adulthood which also brings with it responsibilities. If you do not want to be calling home all the time for money then you need to learn how to budget your income.

Some lucky few do not have this problem, but most of us are stuck looking at a fairly measly pay check at the end of the week and thinking, "How the heck is this going to get me through the next week?" Haven't we all had that conversation with our parents telling us "You need to learn how to budget your money and not just spend it on whatever you feel like." But how do we learn to do that? Either I didn't take the right courses or I was seriously day dreaming the day they covered budgets in school. Most likely we learn by making lots of mistakes, sometimes big ones.

For example, I thought a good way to save money was to charge my very good friend and roommate more than half the rent and not tell her about it. Ultimately ending in her moving out, stiffing me on the rent all together, and never talking to me again. So yes some lessons sting, but after a few more mistakes and having to manage both my husbands finances as well as my own, I think I have stumbled on a way to budget without living on noodles.

My husband just recently started his own company so that means I am responsible for paying ALL the bills because there is no guarantee he will be paid on a regular basis. I stress out when I can't save money. I am one of those "shove the money under the mattress" type of people. Resulting in me being severely stress out after the first month of supporting both of us with no savings. I found that just doing the basic math of adding all of my bills and dividing them by my income didn't work, mainly because I didn't make enough to cover all of our bills. Yikes!

So these are the steps I took to find out what we could afford and what we couldn't:

Find all of your old bills and bank statements
First make sure you have EVERYTHING!
Your bank statements will help with this by showing you what you spend your money on. Sometimes it

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