When it comes to sorting your personal finances out, perhaps the best and most efficient way is to tackle them as though you would if you were addressing business finances. Many of us tend to be a little more relaxed when it comes to dealing with our own funds, with some of us even failing to record our monthly incomings and outgoings, leaving it to chance to get by each month. However, there are many things which we can learn from a business when it comes to dealing with finances effectively:

1. Plan: With many regular household payments payable monthly as the same amount each time, it is easy to forecast and record for several months ahead in advance. This is made more accessible with a regular income amount and average spending habits.
2. Use A Spreadsheet: Don’t rely on scraps of paper or notebooks that are liable to get lost. These methods are prone to errors as they rely on manual calculations which can quickly be done incorrectly and therefore give a false representation of the month. With a spreadsheet, the calculations can be programmed into a formula, whereby a minimum amount of effort is thereon required!
3. Take Account of Difficult or Quieter Months: Many businesses will make allowances when accounting for certain times of the year when they know that business activity is likely to drop, and this can be applied to personal finances. With big occasions such as holidays and Christmas each year, it is possible to adjust certain payments when accounting for them in our own budgets.
4. Revise your Finances Regularly: Once again, businesses know that the key to maintaining a good cash flow is to periodically refer to their budgets to see if they are on track for the financial year. This can be applied to our own personal finances whereby we routinely check that we are getting the best deals for our money and not paying out anything more than we need to be. It can also help highlight any grey areas of our spending habits.