Getting your financial house in order

I just spent some time at Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s site (host of that great show Til Debt Do Us Part) after following a link from an interesting article about her in the Globe and Mail.

I was hoping to find something that will help me with a direction on how to manage our finances, and I think I found some good nuggets. We have the saving down pretty good, but I just haven’t been too sure about what to do next. After perusing the site, I have a bit of a better idea of some things to do to take the next step. This advice to a young couple just starting out seems like it could apply to our situation as well. Basically it’s about figuring out what your goals are and going from there. I think doing that could help a lot to figure out exactly what all this saving is for.

There’s also a neat Interactive Budget Worksheet for excel that seems like it could be pretty useful. I really like that she included some suggested percentages for what to spend on different categories such as housing, transportation, savings, etc. which helps me keep things in perspective because I tend to come up with something and then want to throw all my resources at it at once. Ultimately it’s probably better to keep things in balance even if it takes longer, for example saving up for a down payment.