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In order to start budgeting, you need to have three things in mind:

• Finance
• Expenditure
• Savings

Finance is the money you allot for the household. Expenditure is the fixed monthly expense that you have for your home and personal matters. Savings is the extra money that you may have after expenditure.

Divide the Money

Geeta Hariharan, a housewife says, "I keep a fixed amount aside as household expenditure and then I go on dividing it for different purposes."

For example, if she puts aside Rs.6000 as total money for the house, she divides the total for different commodities like vegetables, fruits, milk, toiletries and grocery.

Apart from that, she makes sure she keeps some amount aside as miscellaneous amount. Vegetables and fruit rates fluctuate.

So the 'difference money' goes into miscellaneous which is then used when any extra expenditure occurs like extra purchases that need to be done when guests come over or when festivals are round the corner.

Go the Bulk Way

Nowadays with the retail boom, you can avail of many offers at one go. Shopping in bulk is much more profitable these days as you can avail of many discounts on maximum retail price and on large billing amounts.

For example, according to Sridhar Ramamurthy, Financial Advisor, when you go to buy soaps, instead of buying one for each member, you can go for the ones with 'three plus one' offer. Similarly, you can avail of offers like oil with rice free.