Host: What goes into a budget?

Kandance Beamon: That's a excellent question, what goes into a budget. What goes into a budget would be your income. You are looking at things such as your job, your employment, how much money are you making. You are going to be looking at your staff's income. How much money are they bringing in? You will be looking at your disability, if you are getting disability you are also going to be looking at any kind of part-time job, may be you have the business on the side that's bringing in additional income. So looking at all of those stands, government assistance. You will be looking at any child support that might be coming in. When you are talking about the income section of a budget though, you have to resist the urge to overestimate your income, because if you aren't able to maintain that income on a monthly basis, you can find yourself in some financial trouble later on down the road and I have to caution as well when stating overtime as income, because when you overtime to something that may not be consistent, the employer at any time can decide to cut back on overtime and if you have created bills that are based on that component, the one that overtime then you will find yourself in trouble not being able to maintain the bills that are in place, that were created based on the overtime. You really want to be conservative when you are talking about income and making sure that you are following on the side of being more modest with your income than over-exaggerating what you are actually making. Another component of your budget would be expenses and what you always have to remember is the amount of money going out should never, ever, ever exceed the amount of money coming in and so when you are looking at expenses, you are looking at your housing cost, you are looking at your food, you are looking at transportation, you are looking at any kind of personal expenses. You are looking at repairs, you are looking at all of those things. Also, part of expenses would be those unexpected expenses. So you have emergencies that come up, your another component would be the savings, making sure that your savings, you are putting the appropriate savings away to save for those emergencies that may arouse. So you really want to make sure that your expense aren't exceeding the amount of money that you have coming in and if you find that it is then you really have to look at ways of making additional income. May be there is an opportunity for a part-time job, may be there is an opportunity for you to earn some money on the side if you have a special skill or if you have a way of making money that can bring in some extra income, in order to cover those expenses that may have arisen.