Zero-based, 50/30/20 or payday: which budget method to use

A budget is only a decision about where money goes before it goes there. These are the three ways people usually make that decision. None is cleverer than the others; they suit different pay and different tempers, and you can change your mind in March.

Zero-based: every dollar gets a job

Write down what you expect to earn this month, then assign all of it: bills, food, transport, savings, debt, fun, until nothing is left unassigned. The last line is zero, which is where the name comes from. It is not "spend everything": money assigned to savings is assigned.

• ✓Suits: anyone paying off debt, or anyone who gets to the end of the month wondering where it went.
• ✓Costs: the most attention. Every dollar has to be given a job, and unplanned spending has to be moved from somewhere else.

50/30/20: three buckets, no line items

Half your take-home pay for needs (rent, food, power, minimum debt payments), thirty per cent for wants, twenty per cent for savings and extra debt payments. You watch three numbers rather than twenty.

• ✓Suits: a first budget, or anyone whose spending is already roughly under control and who wants a check rather than a cage.
• ✓Costs: precision. If your rent alone is 55 per cent of your pay, the split will not hold, and the useful question becomes which bucket is out of shape.

Payday budgeting: one pay at a time

Instead of one monthly budget, you budget each pay against the bills due before the next one. Every payday you list what must be paid out of that pay, what goes to savings, and what is left to live on.

• ✓Suits: irregular or weekly income, and anyone who has run out of money in week four while the budget still said they were fine.
• ✓Costs: you need to know when bills fall, so a bill calendar earns its place.

How it looks on a page

Whichever method you pick, the same four pages carry it through the month:

1. 1The budget page, written before the month starts: income, fixed costs, variable spending, savings and debt.
2. 2A bill calendar, so a due date is never a surprise, which matters most on payday budgeting.
3. 3A spending log, kept daily or weekly. Logging is what turns a guess into a number.
4. 4A month-end review, comparing what you planned with what happened, and setting the next month's budget from it.

Where to write it

The Complete Budget Planner has eight budget pages, by category, by paycheck, annual and the month's own, with a bill calendar, spending logs and a review behind every month. Money Map Budget is the same three methods as a single pack, and the Finance Planner builds a dated year of money in the studio. All of them are on the digital budget planner page.