You were probably going just fine. Life was great. A month later, you slipped up just a bit. Two months later -- boom! Your budget's blown, big time. How long did it take you to get back on track after that? Without a sound financial plan, any business is doomed to failure - managing your personal finances and expenses is no different.

A sound personal financial plan or simple budget is crucial to both your financial and emotional well being. We have prepared a simple and easy to use sample household budget plan for you to better understand our processes below. This budgeting process will show you how to thoroughly develop a financial planner and lead you on the road to financial freedom.

1. Make a complete list of your monthly income The budgeting process always starts with a monthly income; one's income will show how much one has to spend each month. When developing your monthly income, make certain to include take home pay from your job, any bonuses that you receive, dividends and interest income from investments, tax refunds from the government, gifts from other family members, and any other type of income you may require during the particular month.

2. Make a complete list of your monthly expenses Just like the complete list of an income, one must make a comprehensive list of his/her expenses. When you make your list of expenses, it is important to break them into three distinct categories, fixed, flexible, and discretionary.

Fixed Expenses: Expenses that do not change from month to month. Examples of fixed expenses are your mortgage or rent payments, a car payment, insurance premiums (such as life insurance, car insurance, or health insurance) or any other expense that does not vary from month to month. Once you have gathered all of your fixed expenses, you need to make a total of your fixed expenses for use a little later in the process.

Flexible Expenses: Expenses that vary from month to month.

Typically, you can control your flexible expenses to a certain extent. Flexible expenses include items such as groceries, utilities, clothing, restaurant expenses, haircuts, fuel and other items that change from month to month. You should be able to see that you do have at least some control over your flexible expenses. Again, total all of your flexible expenses; we will also use this later in the process.

Discretionary Expenses: Discretionary expenses are clearly not necessary for your survival and may be (in most cases) the cause of many of your financial problems. Examples of discretionary expenses are entertainment, vacations, movies, alcohol, and club memberships. Again, total all of your discretionary expenses.

3. Now Prioritize Your Household Expenses and Budget Put your expenses in order of most importance.If your expenses exceed your income, you may be placing yourself in a position where you will need to use credit cards or store cards to pay for your income's shortfall. This is how most people get into credit card debt. It is important to monitor your use of credit to pay these expenses.

The long-term effects of borrowing to pay for your current expenses can be very hazardous financially.Subtract your total monthly expenses from your total monthly income.

By subtracting all of your monthly expenses from your monthly income, you will clearly see if you are going to have financial difficulties. If you have more expenses than you do income, you will have a negative expense-to-income ratio.

In lay terms, this means that you are spending more than you are making. This is the typical cause of excessive credit card debt. Since you are spending more than you are making, you must finance your budget shortfall with a source of credit such as your credit cards. If you do not stop this trend, your credit card debt will grow and grow until you no longer have the ability to use your credit cards.

If you do have a negative expense-to-income ratio, you need to consider which of your expenses you can reduce. First, start with your discretionary expenses and then move on to your flexible expenses to see what expenses you can eliminate or diminish.

If you still cannot reduce your expenses, and you would like a comprehensive personalised household budget prepared for you, you may want to call us at Total Budget Solutions in Melbourne Victoria on (03) 9557-0800 or email at enquiries@totalbudgit.com.au

In just over an hour, one of our consultants can complete a budget for you that calculates your total earnings, commitments and potential savings. They can give you tips to maintain your own consistent budget that will help you stay on track.