Have you ever had not enough money to work with and too many expenses to pay? What about when you get paid and the only thing you have money for is to pay the bills and not do anything for yourself? Do you ever wonder how to plan to do things on a limited budget?

Lets say for example your average paycheck is $650 after taxes. This is of course assuming you do not get any overtime and there are no holidays in that pay period and there are no exceptions like a promotion. The monthly income does sometimes go up in a month. It is still better to plan your budget based on the minimum amount of paychecks you make in a month. That means that your budget to spend for the month is $1300 dollars. So how do you plan to pay your bills and do things for yourself on that budget?

First let's plan what bills you have due when. You have rent for your apartment due on the 1st of every month. Next you have a car payment you have to make due on the 20th of every month. Then you have a storage unit you pay for that comes due on the 28th of every month. Lastly you also have a credit card payment that is also due on the 28th of every month.

The next thing we have to do is think about how much each of these payments typically costs us each month. First is the rent for your apartment lets say that costs around $535 per month. You are already down to $765 dollars to spend before paying for the rest of your bills. Next you have a car payment that you make a $300 dollar payment for every month. You are down to $465 dollars to spend. The storage unit only costs you $95 a month. That brings what you have left for the month down to $370 for the rest of the month.

Ok now comes time to think about how you spend your credit card. You typically put all of your food expenses and gas for your car expenses on your credit card. A $370 spending limit would be manageable depending how much you spend in a month dining out. Typically food tends to be a major expense in a person's life.

Let's say you allow yourself $100 to eat out in a month. You allow yourself $100 for groceries each month. That is $200 you have charged already. Ok so say if you put gas in your car once a week every month for the entire month that would come to 4 charges for gas. If you put $25 in your car for 4 weeks that would come to $100 dollars. That would mean you have now spent $300 on your credit card. You still have enough to make that payment.

The problem becomes you only have $70 left to save in your bank account. What happens if you have an emergency come up and you need to have money? You already know you will have to transfer money from your savings account to your checking account when your car insurance comes due since that comes due once every 6 months. You plan ahead of time for that and know how much to switch.

If you have a medical emergency, you are going to be scrounging around trying to figure out how to pay the bills and hoping you have a pay increase but the problem becomes you often have to miss work when it is of a medical necessity so you are at a loss of income. One way to reduce expenses is to cut down how much you spend on eating out each month. I know sometimes there aren't always easy ways to reduce expenses or to find a pay increase.

Finding fun things to do does not have to be expensive. Quality time with friends does not alway have to cost money. So that is a way to find something to do for yourself and still keep your expenses down.

So how would you adjust your life if you were tired of constantly tired of having to worry about money all the time? What would you change in your life that you could cut out of your monthly expenses to save money? How do you improve your life on a budget? I know it is not easy for a lot of you out there but trust me when I say you can do it. I struggle a lot with it too but I manage to budget my life pretty well even though it may not seem like it at times.