Successful budgeting is key to good financial health and it really isn’t hard. It just takes some thought and time. These five steps will help create a budget that’s not only realistic, but is successful as well:

List your expenses
Make a list of your fixed expenses such as mortgage or rent payments, car payments, insurance payments, etc. After that, make a list of your fluctuating expenses. These include expenses for dining out, dry cleaning, hobbies, and other bills or expenses that don’t have a consistent payment. Take the time to review old bank statements and check registries to help you calculate estimated figures for these expenses. This is vital successful budgeting.

Separate your wants and needs
After you have made your lists and can see where you’re spending your money, check those lists for places you can curb costs or eliminate them entirely. This is especially important to successfully budgeting to eliminate debt or save money toward a specific goal. Any place where you see you’re clearly wasting money, get rid of it.

Make sure your expectations are realistic
The objective of a successful budgeting is to help you plan for actual expenses while at the same time setting goals for spending that will allow you to save money.

Consider buying budgeting software
Part of the reason you do this is, of course, for guidance in successful budgeting. It helps you understand the expenses categories and helps you map out strategies for successful budgeting. Another part of it, though, is psychological. By investing in budgeting software, you mean business when it comes to your budget and saving goals.

Get your family on board
For the most successful budgeting possible, everyone in your family needs to know and understand the budget. It won’t do any good to create a budget if your husband or wife isn’t aware of it and continues to spend money in ways you haven’t planned for or on things you haven’t made allowances for in your budget. And it’s never too early for kids to develop money skills and to know that there are limits to how much money you can or will spend. So the earlier you get them started, the better.