Benefits of the BuildMyBudget.com Strategy

You will find that the Budget Forecast will help you accomplish several important things. See the complete list of benefits here.

You can pay all of your bills in 15 minutes

Now that all your bills are organized by their due date, you can sit down and pay them all at once. Whether it is by writing a check, paying online, or by utilizing an automatic payment system such as as Billpay, you can sit down each pay period to pay all of your bills.

As you pay each bill, you can use the format painter in the toolbar to highlight the payment so that you know what you have paid. You can also insert a description for your payment by clicking "insert description" from the toolbar. This is beneficial if you pay your bills online and receive complicated confirmation numbers. After you have entered a comment, right click and select "hide comment" from the quick launch menu. You can see the comment again by hovering over the space where you just entered the comment.

Know your bills are being paid on time

The Budget Forecast uses your due date selection to formulate out of which paycheck you should pay the expense. That means all you have to do is sit down and pay your bills each weekly or monthly period and the bill will be paid on time!

Of course you should always double check that you are paying each bill on time, but your budget will help create an easy schedule to follow which will help make sure you are paying your bills on time.

Your budget will also eliminate the stress of wondering when your bills are due, because you will have the due dates written down in one location. If you use Billpay or pay your bills seperately online, you can pay them one-by-one in a single 15 minute session and be done until your next bill period.

Easily see where you are headed

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the Budget Forecast is the ability to see where you are headed within seconds. Just with the click of a button!

If you need to make an adjustment, you can simply go back and adjust your income and expense amounts or just enter the values where you want them to be. You can keep adjusting your income and expenses until your satisfied with your monthly budget and then see how your changes affect your 12 month outlook.

Unlike other budget programs that show you how much you have overspent, the Budget Forecast shows you how your overspending affects your future. This will help you learn how to manage your money better and teach you how to make adjustments so that you can still reach your goals.

Make better financial decisions

Your daily decisions--to buy that $4 coffee, or eat out at lunchtime--have a huge impact on your budget. What if that daily coffee prevents you from going on vacation this year? As you enter actual expenses into your budget, your 12 Month Outlook will change based on your spending. This will allow you to assess your spending patterns and how they are helping or hurting your chances of reaching your financial goals.

If an emergency arises and you have to spend an extra $500 to get your car fixed, you can use your Budget Forecast to figure out the best way to compensate for the extra cash you have to spend. What's great about the Budget Forecast is that it is flexible and will allow you to keep moving around your numbers until you can make them work for you.

Quickly and easily reconcile your budget

Many budgeting programs take hours to download and categorize your expenses. This means you spend all your free time looking at the past and no time looking at the future! The Budget Forecast allows you to quickly and easily enter your actual expenses so you can reconcile your budget. This will allow you time to make decisions about your future...like how much you can afford to spend on coffee and eating out next week.

Making your budget-balance match your bank-balance is very easy and there are many ways to do it:

Use your bank statement and type your expenses into the forecast
Keep your receipts and use them to enter your expenses into the forecast
Look online and copy your bank transactions into the forecast

For further help reconciling your budget: send us an email, check the FAQ page, or check out the BuildMyBudget forums.

Avoid common money mistakes

A valuable benefit of the Budget Forecast is that it will help you make the most of your paycheck and avoid common money mistakes. You may know the habits that you need to practice in order to be financially successful, but you may fail when you try to practice them. Just like everything else, it takes time and practice to master the right habits. The Budget Forecast will help you practice these habits by showing how each of your decisions affects your financial future.

Common Money Mistakes:

Not Planning
Overspending
Buying with Credit
Delaying saving for retirement
Falling prey to sales pitches
Making decisions based on emotion

Being able to see where each of your hard-earned dollars is going can help keep you from falling into a downward spiral. Build your budget, and STICK TO IT!

Increase your Savings

The absolute best benefit of the BuildMyBudget way of budgeting is that you will soon be able to identify how much you can save each month by working backwards. What this means is that if you have $2000 in income for the month and you have $1400 budgeted for expenses, you have $600 left over. Now you can either let it sit in your checking account where you will probably spend it, or you can Pay Yourself First and transfer say, $400 to your Savings account. It might take a few months to get the hang of it, but once you have the ability to forecast how much you can save each month, Paying Yourself First becomes addicting. And what a great addiction to have! Each time you get paid, you know exactly how much you can pay yourself and you transfer the funds to your Savings account, just like you are paying a bill. Using this method, you can figure out how long it will take you to save enough to reach your financial goals. You will be amazed at how quickly your Savings account will grow, enabling financial stability and reducing your stress level exponentially.

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