Most of us understand the importance of creating a budget and sticking to it. A budget is a conscious roadmap of how our money is being spent as well as how we are saving money. Without it, it's akin to walking around with a hole in our pockets. Dave Ramsey created an app to help people create a budget, track their spending and saving, as well as other proactive measures regarding money. This app can be beneficial to those interested in creating a budget if they can understand how to use it properly.

The Man Behind the App

Dave Ramsey is a personal finance media personality. His company was formerly known as the Lampo Group and is now called Ramsey Solutions. Dave Ramsey has written several books that explore his ideology on money principals to help consumers get out of debt as well as manage their debt. EveryDollar is a freemium app that allows consumers to manually input and track all their spending every month. This app utilizes the zero-based budgeting which assigns every dollar to a particular category of spending. You start by inputting your entire monthly salary then you plan your spending for the entire month.  You set up different categories and set a budget for each category. Once all of your categories have been set up, you manually enter your actual spending.

You can purchase EveryDollar Plus if you want your spending to be entered automatically. However, an in-depth explanation of how to use the app will be detailed below.

Signing Up/Registering

Upon registering, you are prompted to enter a money goal. You can choose between:

• Paying off a debt

• Saving for retirement

• Stop living paycheck to paycheck

• Pay for your children's college

• Saving for a home

• Traveling

More About You

Next, you will be prompted to provide more information about yourself. The app will ask if you own or rent a home. It will also ask if you have children. Other questions include whether or not you have a pet and own a car. You will be able to select your answers to all of these questions. Next, you will be prompted for information regarding your income, expenses, charitable donations, and debt. You will be able to enter your paychecks throughout the month or you can enter your paychecks as a monthly total.

Categories for Monthly Expenses

Next, you will need to enter the allocated budget for your monthly expenses. You can edit these amounts later if you need it. However, create preset budgets for each category. List monthly expenses like your utilities, electric bill, gas. and water. Keep in mind that you can add as many categories as you need to. Don't forget to add any expenses associated with your car, like your gas expenses and car repair. Don't forget to include your grocery budget as well as the money allocated to spend eating out.

Inputting Actual Amounts

We have discussed the setup portion of the EveryDollar Budgeting App. The next section will detail the actual use of the EveryDollar Budgeting App. This section will require you to input the actual amounts of money that you are spending and saving across all the different categories you set up. This will help you to determine what changes need to be made and how much you are sticking to your budget. The EveryDollar Budgeting App will ask you to input either an expense or income.

EveryDollar Budget Seven Money Steps

The EveryDollar Budgeting app also includes seven baby steps. These baby steps are designed to help guide your budgeting efforts. Dave Ramsey provides actionable steps that the app user can utilize to master their budget. Ramsey explains each actional step in detail.

Be Your Own Financial SOS

You don't have to have a master's degree in finance to master your own money. It just takes a little guidance and the willingness to stick to a common sense proven plan. However, it's doable. The EveryDollar Budgeting app gives you the road map you need to map and track your progress with common sense actionable steps. The app is free and gives you access to everything, minus the automated feature. If you want your spending to be automatically input, simply invest in the EveryDollar Budgeting app plus which allows you to link your bank accounts. This is a convenience factor that you can pay $129.99 a year for. However, the freemium app gives you access to everything, you just have to input your pay and your expenses manually. Best yet, the EveryDollar Budgeting app is truly educational. The strides you make serve as encouragement for you to keep moving through the steps, and the education and progress will naturally empower you. 

Mental Strength and Focus

Ramsey understands how difficult it is to stick to a budget, especially when you're not used to it. This is one of the many reasons why he has several tips to help you stick to a budget. His tips for making the EveryDollar Budgeting app a success include:

• Writing down/planning your spending before it happens

• Avoiding places that tempt you to spend

• Using the envelope system to avoid overspending

This system:

• Allows you to label each envelope and place your budgeted funds in the allocated envelope

• Once you've spent all the funds in the allocated envelope dont spend anymore

• The EveryDollar Budgeting app breaks your budgeting plan into small bite-sized sections allowing you to build confidence over time and with continued steady progress

Conclusion

These tips fully support the EveryDollar Budgeting app and give you the why behind the steps. Your financial health is a vital part of your future. We all understand that it takes money to live and flourish. This is why it behooves everyone to take the reigns when it comes to their finances. This begins with putting a budget in place. The EveryDollar Budgeting app makes budgeting a doable task with its common sense easy to follow steps.