QuickBooks 2013 For Dummies

All Joking Aside: Some Basic Budgeting Tips

Before I walk you through the mechanics of outlining your Secret Plan, I want to give you a few tips. After that, I want to tell you a secret. A very special secret.

Here are five ways to increase the chances that your Secret Plan works:

Plan your income and expenses as a team, if that’s possible. For this sort of planning, two heads are invariably better than one. What’s more, although I don’t really want to get into marriage counseling or partnership counseling here, the budget of a business — oops, I mean its Secret Plan — needs to reflect the priorities and feelings of everyone who has to live within the plan: partners, partners’ spouses, key employees, and so on. So don’t use a Secret Plan as a way to minimize what your partner spends on marketing or on long-distance telephone charges talking to pseudo-customers and relatives in the old country. You need to resolve such issues before you finalize your Secret Plan.

Include some cushion in your plan. In other words, don’t budget to spend every last dollar. If you plan from the start to spend every dollar you make, you’ll undoubtedly have to fight the mother of all financial battles: paying ...