Talk:Personal budget

Article improvement

This might be the worst Wikipedia article I've ever read, and that's saying a lot. I'm not experienced enough to edit this whole page, but hopefully some heroic veteran can save it. I don't think it would be a bad idea to delete the whole thing altogether. Iskeptic 20:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I second that this article is very poorly written, however there is a lot of useful information here. Most of my criticism has to do with style, and not substance. It seems that the person that wrote this article had never read a Wikipedia article before.

I am working on revising this topic. My current progress can be found here. --Kenneth Cochran 12:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Please do. I have started to write on the similar article in Swedish. So far it's short, mainly about how to organise your budget and tools that can help. Hawklord 20:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I've started to incorporate some of my changes into the main article. The large amount of editing required would make it difficult to merge my completed copy into the main article. So instead I'll just edit the article in small increments. --Kenneth Cochran 13:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

It might help to break this into seperate pages. The methods should go under the link that the "Budget" page on wikipedia refers to under Personal Budgets. I agree, the content here is awful. It's also heavily biased. It should just be a definition of what a personal budget is, and separate pages listing all the methods, criticism of different methods, etc, and another one listing all the tools (if it's possible to separate them out as some are tightly coupled with a unique method). --Hpatenaude 19:38, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll take my stabs at some of the more outrageous paragraphs... it should sound less like WikiHow though. —Rob (talk) 20:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

It reads less like wikihow and more like it's copied from a textbook or webpage somewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.108.209.183 (talk) 22:18, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Original research

One of the things about the article even now is that a lot of it smacks of original research. The more references to back up what's being said in this article (and with as many personal budgeting methods as there are in existence, this is hard)... the better. —Rob (talk) 16:29, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The mention of debt service is redundant as it is an expense, also if budget allocation to savings is includeded then the foremost mentions should be taxes and insurance before savings. Go2self 21:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Taxes are certainly an unavoidable expense. Insurance is optional. --SueHay 02:18, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Sample Budget

The illustration is a budget summary that lists cash flow event totals as opposed to a working budget that itemizes cash flow events with amounts and dates so it can be used by consumers as an active plan or map. Go2self 22:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that most people want to spend their time itemizing every "cash flow event" that they expect during the coming month or year, then recording the event when it happens. But I think that lots of people would appreciate a useful Wikipedia article that describes what a personal budget is -- in general terms -- then gives more details and variations for people who want that information. I understand that some people like to schedule and record every cash flow event, and if that works for them, that's fine. But not everyone wants to pursue that level of detail.

You refer to Wikipedia readers as "consumers." That suggests a marketing bias. We're not here to sell anything.

You know a lot about personal budgets and can help others understand personal budgets, so please give all the help you can. --SueHay 03:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Envelope budgeting...

It's not particularly difficult. It's not all that complex. It really should be merged into Personal budget. Will merge in 7 days (2006-09-29). —Rob (talk) 18:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The Envelopes section almost looks like a lead into Mvelopes online budgeting company, I may be wrong Go2self 21:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I think Mvelopes is based on old-fashioned envelope budgeting. I don't know where that info on envelope budgeting came from, but it describes the process well. I'll see if I can find a reference for that. There's no harm in mentioning that online programs are available for personal budgeting, but if you think the wording is too suggestive of any one program, change it. --SueHay 22:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Overall

Just completed a rework of the first paragraph and some others to a lesser extent. There is sooo much work caused by the vagueness of the implied "research". The topic is certainly worthy of additions, if anything at least one paragraph at at time. Go2self 03:44, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Tools

Might I recommend the addition of http://pearbudget.com/ and/or http://ideaharbor.org/peachbudget/ to either the Tools section or the References section as examples of spreadsheet-based personal budget templates? Currently the article only mentions http://budget-master.com/, a web-based solution. Full disclosure requires that I confess to maintaining one of the two recommended sites, which is why I don't want to make the addition myself, but they really are both good tools worthy of your consideration. Raggmopp614 14:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I would like to recommend Budgets Get Real http://budgetsgetreal.com/ be added to the Tools section, specifically as Money management software. Not only is this a quality tool, but it is appropriate for use in most of the world's countries, unlike the listed software which have since retracted almost all of their International versions. And yes, I am involved in the development of this software. Lorenai 04:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone have any comments to make about the recent delisting of the online budgeting web site budget-master.com (that someone had just added a link to) in favor of whostolemymoney.com? Contrasting and comparing the two programs, budget-master.com provides the opportunity to do both budgeting and long-term planning using a 12-month spreadsheet format with date-shifting. (It's patent pending because date-shifting of a spreadsheet has never been done before.) While whostolemymoney.com uses many page views in a one-month format, with claims to date-shifting that are not obvious in the demo. (It's hard to access the claim of patent pending because the format and techniques shown are not unusual.) And both offer some free use and low user costs. As an encyclopedia, I would think that we should list them both and give interested readers the opportunity to review each for possible use. What bothers me is that whoever altered the information about online budgeting programs delisted one site in favor of another, which seems more like an attempt to use this wiki as a sales and marketing tool rather than an important information tool. Since I created and own budget-master.com I will not make any changes adding back budget-master.com, but feel that there's an important philosophical issue at stake here, and visitors to Wikipedia are the losers. --Dianeinct 2 July 2007 8 am. (having trouble using the signing method) ----

I'm inclined to agree with Dianeinct, I don't think it's really acceptable for someone to come in and anonymously remove one persons link just to replace it with their own. I can't comment as to which is the better product, or if either are suitable to be listed here. That should be left for someone else to more impartially decide. -- Lorenai 03:34, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I certainly agree with what is being voiced here. The current example (www.whostolemymoney.com) is restricted to only New Zealand customers, and while you can obviously lie about your location in the registration, only imports from major New Zealand banks are supported. This certainly does not represent the general audience of a Wikipedia viewer. --ShawSam 1:18am, 21 July 2007 (AEST)

Worldwide view

I looked into the basis for the worldwide view tag on this article. I was hoping to remove the tag. But the tag is completely justified right now. A personal budget is an expenditure plan based on income or the consumption of savings. There is no reason to dedicate more than a single section to technological tools for budgeting, especially when those tools assume personal debt, use of credit cards, and Internet access, none of which are worldwide. I suggest the article concentrate on basic personal money management -- as in what some people were lucky enough to learn when they were children and had an allowance -- THEN discuss more complex features of money management such as going into debt, paying off debt, and investing in an IRA (very American).

I know this won't happen overnight, but it's something to think about as the article develops. --SueHay 00:47, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Calendar Style

Having been told that I cannot merely add content with links, I recommend the addition of another common style of budgeting, which is maintaining expenses on a calendar and figuring out your new account balance on the top of each day. This is analogous to a banks transaction history, except for each entry on a day, you subtract (for expenses) or add (for income) values to your spending categories. This is a variation of the envelope method (or using budgeting categories) that many people are using. There is some software that automates this such as the web site http://calendarbudget.com (which I created) or the freeware application "Budget Calendar" (http://www.tucows.com/preview/395759). Calendarbudget 16:02, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

25% section

Can someone find a source on the suggestion to budget 25%? I can't find any, but I do find a source claiming that most households spend about 30-40% on housing, which sounds more accurate:

_{David Lereah (2003). "The Importance of America's Housing Sector to the Economy". On Common Ground. National Association of Realtors. Retrieved 2008-02-28.}

Any objection to editing the section in question accordingly? -- RoninBK _{T C} 12:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I know for sure that Dave Ramsey has said to find something that's 25% of your income, on a 15-year mortgage. Any statement regarding how much % of income to dedicate to a budget would have to be qualified, of course, but for this particular bit I'm pretty sure his book "Total Money Makeover" can be cited. —Rob (talk) 20:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

References needed

Could interested editors please add sources to the article and engage in cleaning it up. It has vast swathes of unsourced material. I will reduce it down to a stub soon unless proper references are added to support the text. Thanks, Railfan23 (talk) 16:57, 9 August 2019 (UTC)