There’s no question that the pandemic has affected the finances of many people. Going through possible job loss or reduction in business productivity has made paying bills on time a challenge. Even with government interventions for rent and payroll assistance, it’s likely that the credit scores of many people took a hit this year.

When you create a personal or household budget it is the starting point to effective money management and laying a solid financial foundation. Follow the steps to create a worksheet with columns that give you an accurate look into all aspects of your resources and the demands on them. The resulting document empowers you to discover what you have, how much you need to make, how well you’ve been managing so far, and how to adjust so that you stay ahead with your financial goals.

It used to be an accepted hypothesis that along with the perception of some credit being a bad thing for your finances, economists believed that was also a type of “good debt.” Today, volatility is spread over many markets. Many long-held assumptions about good or bad debt should be reconsidered now, following a long year of unrest affecting our lives’ health, economic, climate, and social realities.