How to Organize Miscellaneous Expenses

How to Organize Miscellaneous Expenses
Present a topic on budgeting. Again, with the help of Expert Village, I hopefully will be able to help people and assist people in terms of developing a budget. In this clip we're going to discuss the last item or items that affect the budget, and this is pretty much a catch-all. This is the miscellaneous-slash-other category. This can be anything. I just kind of put things that I've looked at that were pretty common to different situations. So under the miscellaneous/other - it could be "legal", a legal expense that you might have. Say you're updating your will on an annual basis, or you might have a situation where you're arguing a parking ticket, so that would be whatever legal expenses that you might have. Newspaper: I'm an avid reader. I get three to four newspapers a month, so I get a lot of newspapers, so that's a big category for me. Lessons and sports: again I've got small kids, so we've got swim lessons, we've got soccer lessons. My daughter's looking at going into the band, so we'll have a musical instrument that we need to pay for. And so we've got all those things under lessons and sports that can impact your budget. Hobbies: I like to draw, I like to garden. All those activities require things I need to buy; whether it's seeds, whether it's different types of fertilizer, things like that, for my gardening. That needs to be included in the budget. Drycleaners: normally we're sending stuff to drycleaners that can't be laundered at home. And then household items. Maybe you're buying something for the home, a picture, a piece of art, something like that. That would be under that category. So this miscellaneous category actually is pretty broad. It can cover just anything that you're normally buying on a not a frequent basis, but on a frequent enough basis that it needs to be included in the budget. So, these items can be anything that is specific to your situation. Whether maybe you're getting fresh flowers every week for the home or you're having a lawn service come in to maintain your lawn. So those are the kind of things that would be under the miscellaneous column that you need to incorporate into the budget. So again, look at things that you are contracting or things that you are spending on a routine basis that don't fall into those other categories. They don't fall under housing, they don't fall under utilities. They don't fall under medical and dental. They don't fall under travel and entertainment. This is the catch-all for anything that doesn't fall in those other categories, you want to put in miscellaneous and other, but you don't want to leave it out of the budget. So, think about all the catch-all items, put them under the miscellaneous and other category. Try to determine what those expenses are, divide it by twelve, and put it in your monthly budget.