4 Step Budget

Follow the Hummingbird consulting is a Public Benefit Corporation based out of the beautiful city of New Orleans.

Today I want to talk about budgeting!

One common struggle small business owners face is a sense of overwhelming. A proper monthly budget is a good start for reducing this stress. So here are four steps to follow in completing your own monthly budget.

Quick tip: I mostly do use the monthly budget template in Microsoft Office when I do my personal budget.

So let’s dive into this:

Step number 1

Determine your monthly income plus savings. Don’t stress if your starting savings is zero for the month. The budget is there to give you boundaries. Once you know your limits you know how to adapt. So identify your after tax and deductions net income from all revenue sources: day job, side hustle, monetized hobby. If you’re receiving money from it, include it in the budget.

Step number 2

Prioritize your bills. This step is your recurring monthly expenses. Things you don’t have wiggle room on, like rent, electricity, gas, cable, insurance. This is also where you will include any scheduled debt payments, to better understand how long it will take you to pay off your debt. I recommend the credit card payment template in Microsoft Office. 

This works with any scheduled debt payment as long as you know your current balance, your monthly minimum payment, and your interest rate. You can adjust the monthly payment amount, or the time to pay off amounts to find a timeline you’re comfortable with.

Step number 3

Here we enter your non-scheduled expenses. However, unlike the previous step, these are not a fixed amounts. While you will need to buy food and transportation the total amounts do not necessarily come out to the same total every month.

Step number 4

Finally we’ve reached the non-essential expenditures. With what’s left over you’ll be able to divide between savings and lifestyle. This is where you will budget in clothing, vacations, concert tickets, restaurants etc.

And those are our four steps to creating your own budget!

We hope this helps!