A budget just sounds bad. The word itself doesn’t bring about images of marital bliss. It more than likely brings up images of dusty sandwiches pulled from brown bags and boring nights at home counting lightning bugs in the back yard. If you’re married, you may not feel this way about your budget, but your significant other may. What can you do to align your household on a single budget everyone can stomach?

Creating a budget should be a family affair. It doesn’t have to be a whiteboard session with folding chairs, but should be a sit down serious time to discuss the needs of the family, between the adults. Let’s be clear — a nine year old should play a part in the budget too, but should not hear talks about mortgage, credit card debt, and sinking stock market. We need to think about their innocence afterall.

When getting serious with a budget, it pays to outline where the money goes in your family. You can purchase an inexpensive program like Microsoft Money to document your current spending habits, estimate monthly utility expenses, and regulate when bills get paid.

Open communication about spending can help you secure a sound budget. The best budgets come from discussions that start with necessities. Find the financial number your family needs to survive on a monthly basis. This would entail, mortgage/rent, utilities, car expenses, food, and credit card minimum payments. The surplus money can then be saved in a separate savings account or put towards paying down credit cards.

The discussion that follows your monthly necessity line should involve what things you feel you need. You may have expenses related to entertainment, dining out, etc. that should be agreed upon. Once both of you agree, you need to be accountable to each other. You should not just criticize but also encourage each other during lean months. The will to stay on track with a budget often times comes from our spouse.

The budget doesn’t have to be a dirty word. It can be a simple routine for where to put your paychecks. It will also alleviate some financial stress, as you’ll have a realistic idea of when you’ll be able to pay off credit card debt, take a vacation or slap siding on the house. Give it a try, and let us know how it worked out.

Comment Questions:

• Do you use a budget?
• What things did you consider when creating your budget?

Many of you may be saying, of course open source can save you money. Others may be asking what exactly open source means. The term open source refers to the code behind software being visible. Notice how you can’t look under the hood with Microsoft Word? Open source gives anyone access to the code that propels the machine. Often times this means more people can get their hands dirty and work on improving the software solution. To us, open source software can translate to dollars saved on a software license.

The big financial hurt comes from software solutions like Microsoft Word, Excel, and the operating system itself. Forget about Macs for a moment. Let’s focus our attention on the vast Windows software market. To buy a license for Microsoft Office Professional, which includes Word, Excel, Publisher, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Access, you would have to pay roughly $375. That’s a lot of dough!

Most people would not be comfortable buying a computer without some programs that essentially do what the Microsoft Office programs do for them. What if you put your credit card back in your pocket and took the open source plunge? There’s not a lot of software solutions that can do what Microsoft Office does without a price tag. In order to really benefit from open source, your operating system would also have to be open source. We’re refering to Linux here.

Open source operating systems like Ubuntu have taken the world by storm in the last few years. The Ubuntu distribution (distro, for you Linux enthusiasts) has been the top viewed Linux distribution on www.distrowatch.com since 2005 (one year after its inception). The operating system merges the ease of use of Windows with open source expandable solutions. It also helps that the www.ubuntu.org forums have a wealth of information. It seems this Linux build has started to convert PC users over to its free platform. New Dell computers are also being sold with Ubuntu pre-installed. Wow!

You can save money with open source softare. The problem is removing ourselves from the Windows environment and moving towards a free solution. If you own Ubuntu, then you can install Open Office, which does most of the things Microsoft Office does. Open Office comes free as a download or preinstalled on select distributions.

Of course, open source solutions can have their downside too. Aside from being free, there’s largely little support for the beginner. The operating systems sometimes have problems with simple things like recording through a microphone. But open source solutions definitely have something to offer each of us in our quest to save money. Think about it the next time you’re buying a computer. And, if Apple ever releases a Linux iTunes, expect the number of Linux computers to skyrocket. We all have something holding us back.

We have to make money to save money. Sometimes that means taking a second job, learning a new skill, or selling off unused items from around our house. In this economy, we can never have too many income streams. At Save Money.com, we have talked extensively about how you can save money…now we would like to talk about how you can make money in order to save it!

1. Sell old items on Ebay — We all probably have old electronics, maybe a spare cell phone, old gaming system, ancient digital camera lying around the house. What better way to boost your income than to sell those items on Ebay. Of course, in this computer age, you don’t have to stick with Ebay. You can also sell your everyday items on Yahoo! Auctions or on places like Ubid.com.
2. Start an online store — It may sound crazy, but there are many services available to small business owners. Many people have started online stores as a hobby or second job and found them to be quite lucrative. You can get started with a ready-made store, or, if you are familiar with programming, start with a free open source solution, like osCommerce.
3. Become a freelancer — It’s no secret that many jobs have become outsourced. To facilitate the outsourcing of jobs, many sites like Guru.com or Elance.com have become the freelance marketplace. You can find freelance work for almost any trade, including web design, writing, and administrative work.
4. Affiliate marketing — You can find money in some strange places. One of those strange places happens to be affiliate marketing. Basically you take it upon yourself to be the ad manager for a company’s wares. You get a percentage of the sale when you send them a customer. Sounds easy, but it’s not. It’s actually quite time consuming, but if it’s right for you then it can make you a lot of money. Sites like Clickbank can help you find products to promote.
5. Start a blog — One just like ours. Of course, if you want to make money with a blog it would take a while. If you build up enough traffic, then you can sell ad space on your site. You have to really love writing. If you do, then jump in — the water feels great!

If you don’t think any of these ideas are right for you, then maybe you can pioneer a new income model. The internet offers opportunity for many of us to boost our incomes. The more money we make the more we can save. Of course, the income should help stabilize our finances, propel us towards our saving goals, and ultimately lead us to financial freedom.