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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Living on One Income

Living on one income in a two income world is difficult, but it can be done. If you create a spending plan based upon your monthly income and assign a name to every dollar you will soon know where all your money goes. It all comes down to your spending habits - your wants and needs.

Setting up an automatic savings account and using a money management software program can help you as well. Or just an excel spreadsheet will do the job.


Create a spending plan and review it twice a month. Record all monies coming in and all monies going out. List your fixed and variable expenses. Use a finance or money software program such as Quicken http://www.quicken.com/ to keep track of your savings and spending.

Once you have your spending plan in place take a look at all your variable expenses to see if you can cut back on them. For example, what about your cable, phone service, clothing expenses and gym memberships? Are you really using the gym? Call your insurance company to see if you can get a better rate. Shop around for the best deals. It's amazing how much money you can save each month.

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