Home purchase especially for first time home buyers is considered a very valuable investment to embark on. Thus, before making the final plunge and finally sealing the deal, there are important components that you must consider when planning for a new home purchase. One of these salient considerations is for your budget or financial allocation intentionally spent on home buying. In fact, without proper budgeting it is quite difficult if not impossible to carry on with your real estate venture. Your budget will mainly determine the kind and quality of house you can afford therefore make it your utmost priority to deal with your budget before signing the final documents. There are several categories and factors you need to ensure and include when making your financial management in buying a new house. An important thing to start with is to make sure that you are balancing all important categories so as not to encounter possible problems and dilemma in relation to your monetary resources. The success of your investment depends on how you properly allocate your finances and your sense of priority, what comes first and what to pay first.
A budget is your plans for the next year expressed in numbers. Is it really? By default it is. Passing the budget limits spending and forces a plan on the school. Does your budgeting process create what is best for the school? A common budgeting technique is to increase all of the numbers by 3% (assumed rate of inflation). Now comes the difficult and contentious part. Once everyone sees the trial budget, mission proponents and student advocates must work strenuously (some would say fight) to change the numbers. The result is a high level of dissatisfaction on all sides with the budget. The discord spills over to the donors and they are less generous because their hearts and smiles are absent. No one wins. The mission and students receive less than necessary, the donors give less than hoped, and support is less than expected. Unfortunately, sometimes friendships are strained. In short, the coming year is one of struggle. Here is a simple exercise you can do in the quiet of your office.
You can now roll with the punches. You are no longer limited by one months worth of pay. Go ahead and dip into your reserve buffer. YNAB will adjust your next months budget by deducting whatever you borrowed for the unexpected expense. So if you are twenty dollars over buget in May, then you will have twenty less dollars to use for budgeting in June. Are you over your budget? Are you under your budget? With YNAB you will quickly be able to tell. When you start the software you create budgeting categories or use the defaults. You can use basic categories such as Debt Reduction, or break it down with subcategories such as “Debt Reduction:Credit Cards” and “Debt Reduction:Car Loan”. Next, record your transactions in the register. Enter these transactions manually or download them in Microsoft Money or Quicken format from your bank. You will then assign a budgeting category to each transaction in your register.
Budgeting in this day and age is much more difficult than it ever was. As Christians, we have to be much more aware of how budgeting affects our families and our lives. It is our duty to our Lord to insure that we are following Biblically based principles in our budgeting and every other area of our existence. There are many factors that come into play where budgeting for Christians is concerned It can be easy to forget that our problems are not all produced from lack of funds or any other “lack” in our lives. The Bible says that we must hold each thought captive, this holds true for our financial beliefs about ourselves as well. Our perceived lack in our lives can many times be traced towards our attitude about money. I encourage you to ask yourself if you are truly following God’s instruction for your finances. God does not say that our money or lack thereof are problems, it’s the ego we so often relate to it that begins to cause the issue.