We call this a working budget because we will use it for our 42 earning years (see the table/calendar above). And yes, we will continually modify it as our circumstances change. If you use a pencil and an A4 or A5 hard cover notebook (as I did many years ago), making changes are quite easy. If you do it electronically, it’s even easier.
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This working budget will tell you how much you are spending on specified items – and the list could be very long. It won’t tell you whether you are spending money in a balanced way. (For that, you need a troubleshooting budget. We’ll do that in our blog next week.)
For reasons of space, we’ve shown INCOME above SPENDING. Often, INCOME is shown on the left, alongside SPENDING on the right.
This budget is for studying – not reading. The blank cells in the last column could be your numbers. Focus on the subtotals in cells framed with double lines – they enable us to calculate our AVAILABLE SALARY.
Three questions now, and I won’t provide the answers:
- Can you see a ‘missing’ R100?
- Where could this R100 be?
- Is the ‘missing’ R100 good news, or bad news?
If you need help, talk to someone in your human resources department, or to your financial advisor. Or leave a question for me, right here on this blog.
Jay Pillay’s first two critical decades were spent where his first decade began – in Pietermaritzburg. After studying at ML Sultan Technikon in Durban (anyone remember that place?), he then joined the sugar industry, working in Tongaat, Durban, and Xinavane – a sugar mill village 120km north of Maputo. Oh yes – there was a brief period of unfaithfulness, when he flirted with aluminium in Richard’s Bay. Upon retirement, he and his wife Dorothy – settled in Southport.
Jay began writing about salary management (for ordinary people living on a salary) in the early 2000s. Many of his articles were published by The Ripple Effect, a Durban-based corporate newsletter. In all his writing, Jay says he attempts to emphasise the big picture in salary management: it’s not just about making it to your next payday – it’s about making it to the end of your working life. It’s not just about your working life – it’s about your retirement too. It’s not just about the cost of living – it’s about the cost of dying too. It’s not just about you as a salary manager – it’s about your dependants too.
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