Talk:Personal budget
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This might be the worst Wikipedia article I've ever read, and that's saying a lot. I'm not experienced enough to edit this whole page, but hopefully some heroic veteran can save it. I don't think it would be a bad idea to delete the whole thing altogether. Iskeptic 20:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I second that this article is very poorly written, however there is a lot of useful information here. Most of my criticism has to do with style, and not substance. It seems that the person that wrote this article had never read a Wikipedia article before.
I am working on revising this topic. My current progress can be found here. --Kenneth Cochran 12:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
- Please do. I have started to write on the similar article in Swedish. So far it's short, mainly about how to organise your budget and tools that can help. Hawklord 20:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I've started to incorporate some of my changes into the main article. The large amount of editing required would make it difficult to merge my completed copy into the main article. So instead I'll just edit the article in small increments. --Kenneth Cochran 13:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
It might help to break this into seperate pages. The methods should go under the link that the "Budget" page on wikipedia refers to under Personal Budgets. I agree, the content here is awful. It's also heavily biased. It should just be a definition of what a personal budget is, and separate pages listing all the methods, criticism of different methods, etc, and another one listing all the tools (if it's possible to separate them out as some are tightly coupled with a unique method). --Hpatenaude 19:38, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
- I'll take my stabs at some of the more outrageous paragraphs... it should sound less like WikiHow though. —Rob (talk) 20:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Contents |
[edit] Original research
One of the things about the article even now is that a lot of it smacks of original research. The more references to back up what's being said in this article (and with as many personal budgeting methods as there are in existence, this is hard)... the better. —Rob (talk) 16:29, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
The mention of debt service is redundant as it is an expense, also if budget allocation to savings is includeded then the foremost mentions should be taxes and insurance before savings. Go2self 21:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Sample Budget
The illustration is a budget summary that lists cash flow event totals as opposed to a working budget that itemizes cash flow events with amounts and dates so it can be used by consumers as an active plan or map. Go2self 22:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Envelope budgeting...
It's not particularly difficult. It's not all that complex. It really should be merged into Personal budget. Will merge in 7 days (2006-09-29). —Rob (talk) 18:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
The Envelopes section almost looks like a lead into Mvelopes online budgeting company, I may be wrong Go2self 21:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
- I think Mvelopes is based on old-fashioned envelope budgeting. I don't know where that info on envelope budgeting came from, but it describes the process well. I'll see if I can find a reference for that. There's no harm in mentioning that online programs are available for personal budgeting, but if you think the wording is too suggestive of any one program, change it. --SueHay 22:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Overall
Just completed a rework of the first paragraph and some others to a lesser extent. There is sooo much work caused by the vagueness of the implied "research". The topic is certainly worthy of additions, if anything at least one paragraph at at time. Go2self 03:44, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Tools
Might I recommend the addition of http://pearbudget.com/ and/or http://ideaharbor.org/peachbudget/ to either the Tools section or the References section as examples of spreadsheet-based personal budget templates? Currently the article only mentions http://budget-master.com/, a web-based solution. Full disclosure requires that I confess to maintaining one of the two recommended sites, which is why I don't want to make the addition myself, but they really are both good tools worthy of your consideration. Raggmopp614 14:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Worldwide view
I looked into the basis for the worldwide view tag on this article. I was hoping to remove the tag. But the tag is completely justified right now. A personal budget is an expenditure plan based on income or the consumption of savings. There is no reason to dedicate more than a single section to technological tools for budgeting, especially when those tools assume personal debt, use of credit cards, and Internet access, none of which are worldwide. I suggest the article concentrate on basic personal money management -- as in what some people were lucky enough to learn when they were children and had an allowance -- THEN discuss more complex features of money management such as going into debt, paying off debt, and investing in an IRA (very American).
I know this won't happen overnight, but it's something to think about as the article develops. --SueHay 00:47, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
