Quicken® 2010 For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Maximum Fun, Maximum Profits

In This Chapter

• Deciding whether you need a budget

• Discovering tips for personal and business budgets

• Setting up and reviewing a budget

I don't think that a budget amounts to financial handcuffs, and neither should you. A budget is really a plan that outlines the way you need to spend your money to achieve the maximum amount of fun or the way a business needs to spend its money to make the most profit.

Should You Even Bother with a Budget?

A budget, as you probably know, is a list of the ways you earn and spend your money. If you create a good, workable category list with Quicken (see Chapter 2), you're halfway to a good, solid budget. (In fact, the only step left is to specify how much you earn in each income category and how much you spend in each expense category.)

Does everybody need a budget? No, of course not. Maybe, at your house, you're already having a bunch of fun with your money. Maybe, in your business, you make money so effortlessly that you really don't plan your income and outgo.

For the rest of us, though, a budget improves our chances of getting to wherever it is we want to go financially. In fact, I'll stop calling it a budget. The word has such negative connotations. I know — I'll call it a Secret Plan.

Serious Advice about Your Secret Plan

Before I walk you through the mechanics of outlining your Secret Plan (your budget), I want to give you a few tips.

Your personal Secret Plan

Tip

You can do four things to make your Secret Plan more ...