If you are having trouble making a budget, you will find that there are lots of good resources available from OneCareCredit who provide lots of ideas on credit counseling.

The basic ideas are quite simple: you want to make sure that you are keeping more than you are spending in the long run; that your primary expenses are paid for; and that there is discretionary money for other things, such as savings, retirement, holidays, and nasty surprises. All of these come out of the budget.

Initially, many bloggers report that budgeting is difficult, and that they miss their budgets for several months. However, after following their budget, they manage to get better at predicting (ie. the budget becomes more accurate) and controlling their expenses (ie. they are able to manage their spending within the budget guidelines).

A good article of theirs goes into some great ideas about keeping your budget on track, but there’s also a good expense tracker page you can use and print out graphs. So if you are having trouble budgeting, you’ll find that there are some surprisingly effective (and did I say free?) tools on the Internet that can help you achieve a good budget.

Sponsored by OneCareCredit.com.