Monitoring your income and expenses

Once you notice your finances being out of control, the first thing to do is to put the brakes on and take control of the situation.

Here we tell you of some steps you can take to get your finances back into a good balance and have control over them.

First thing to do is to take a step back and take a good look at where the finances have gone wrong and make an overview of income and expenditure. How much income was there and what were the necessary expenses and which ones are the ones that you can give up. The most useful way to get a good overview is using Excel, even though it can sound boring, it does give you a good overall picture of how your finances are.

This article consists of:
•    Monitoring income and expenses 
•    How could you balance your finances

Check your income

Income is all money coming into your bank account, primarily your regular salary is your main source of income. Other income can be, for example salary from your side jobs, grants, revenue from investments or for example KELA aid. 

Looking at your income, it is important to have a realistic picture of your regular income and what and how much really is your extra income.

Check your expenses

Here it is good to have a look at where and what you spend your income on. The best overview you can get from your primarily used bank account by printing or downloading your bank statement from the past year. 

Here you can see how much income did you have during the year and how much did you spend and on what. Which one of the expenses are the ones you can let go of and which ones are fully unnecessary. 

Do some accounting

The best way to map out your income and expenses is to go back a whole calendar year and see what the income was and what the expenses were. Was the balance positive or negative at the end of the year, did you manage to put anything into your savings? 

After you have made a summary of your income and expenses you can see how big the difference has been between income and expenses. If your income has been more than your expenses your balance has been positive, but if your expenses have been more than your income then it's unfortunately negative and this is when you should try to make changes and fix the situation in a way that works for you the best.

By consolidating your loans by getting a larger credit can help. This should be done in a way that it is a long-term solution and not a short term fix. By combining all your loans into one though doesn’t mean you then have more to spend from your income but rather to keep your expenses in check.

Summary

Here we went through a few things how you could get a good start to balancing your finances. What comes to your income and expenses is good to have a realistic overview of your income and really take a good look at which one of your expenses are necessary.