You can use payroll deductions and bonus incomes, looking around for the best interest rates, and improving your spending habits. You can add up to your savings by doing little things that can help you: save lunch and coupon money, take advantage of sales, saving your loose change, and being willing to compromise especially when there are other bills that call for your attention and money. The Australian National Audit Office has identified the advantages of activity based budgeting: The Advantages - Output costs are supported by a schedule of costed activities - Opportunities to examine work processes - Identifies non value-adding activities that can be eliminated - Basis of a performance measurement system and direct link between strategic goals and operational realities - Enables cost profiles to be managed - Accurate costing data for operational management - Costs are transparent, understandable and actionable Disadvantages - Activity definition may become too detailed and the model may become too complex and difficult to maintain - Underestimation of the task of collecting activity driver data - Implementation may be considered a financial management fad and there is insufficient commitment from operational managers Activity Based Budgeting Disadvantages - Usually requires buying Activity Based Budgeting software - Requires training of all managers including budgeting department - Requires people to really understand what drives their budget - Eliminates excuse that activity volume changed because it makes visible volume changes - Requires everyone to collect or estimate activity volume By understanding how resources are transformed into products or services, and byfocusing on the cost of activities, activity based budgeting helps an organisation to obtain a greaterunderstanding of how costs behave in their organization and which activities create significant amounts of cost. Since budgeting is about the future, budget decisions regarding the allocation of resources must be based on forecasts. Forecasts are significant because they predicting things like the next wave of technological change, the weather, and natural disaster, all of which can have important economic and budget implications. Don't Let Retirement Sneak Up on You -- Budget and Plan Many people hate these words. They associate budgeting and planning with that of a strict, low-fat, low-carb, high-protein dieting. They believe that those people who do budgeting and planning are starving themselves to death. But the funny thing with this is that these same people who criticize budgeting and planning fail to take a look at retirees who splurge themselves during their fruitful years. This is for emergency reasons like you unfortunately lose a job or one of the family members become ill. This fall back plan of your home budgeting becomes your life saver. Make your home budgeting work for you, and not the other way around. Everyone's spending habits are different. This means that your utility bills may be larger or smaller than your neighbors. You can start your household budgeting by making a layout of your expenditures and income by month for the past year. This will give you the idea of the amount and timing of your cash flow on a monthly basis. You will also see the incoming and outgoing of cash that occur weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually.