People often can be successful in the business world but clueless when it comes to managing their own finances. A business-minded strategy is a great way to manage and organize your household finances.

“Business advice can translate into wise decisions for your personal finances,” said Heath Tudor, consumer liaison for Resqdebt, a financial health management company in Allen, Texas.  “Using simple business practices, you can easily make your house more profitable and efficient.”

Tudor suggests these steps for managing your household finances:

Create a Plan - All businesses begin with some sort of a plan, both short term and long term. Plans help guide decisions and direct you where you want to be in a certain amount of time. Build a plan around your goals. Budget for everyday expenses, emergencies and long term plans.

Track Spending – Businesses often use spreadsheets to track income and expenses. This lets them know the state of the company’s finances at anytime. Tracking your finances will help you visualize your situation and make better decisions. However, you don’t need an expensive or complicated bookkeeping program to track your finances. Check out free online bookkeeping tools, such as Quicken or Mvelopes or create your own spreadsheet. Record everything that you bring in, spend and owe.

What comes in must be more than what goes out- In business you want to bring in more than what you are spending; the same should apply at home. As you track your finances, look at your income and your spending habits. If you are coming up short every month or using your credit cards to cover purchases, you need to adjust your income-to-spending ratio.

Cut Down on Expenses - Businesses want to keep expenses low so that overhead does not cut into their profits. You can’t always change how much money you bring in but, you can change what you pay out. Examine your bills and find places where you can cut down on monthly expenses.

Conduct Reviews - Review your plan weekly, monthly and yearly. Make adjustments and track your goals.

Overall, the most important thing for your household finances is to stay organized. Know what you are spending and always remember the bottom line. These steps will help you become more profitable and the CEO of your house.

I’m writing this post at 4:07am, and just a couple hours ago my mom passed away at 54 years young. For those who have followed along for a while, you are probably familiar with Mom’s medical struggles dating back 13 months.

I know it may seem strange to some that I’m even at a keyboard, but Mom’s now gone, the house is quiet with sleeping kids, and I’m turning to the activity that has always been therapeutic for me: writing.

Strange that through blogging we feel compelled to share life’s highs and lows with 10,000 complete strangers, but I don’t think of you as “complete” strangers. Over the last couple years I’ve made “virtual” friendships with many of you, and I enjoy sharing bits about my life with you all – the highs and the very, very lows.

I hope you’ll understand that I need a little time away from the blog to help settle my mom’s affairs, look after my grandfather, and grieve. I’ve lined up a couple guests posts for the week, and there may be a day or two between posts.

Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers expressed over these last 13 months.

I wrote a bit more about my mom in this post, The Path to Contentment

When our financial turnaround was underway there were a couple things that often derailed our plan. Emergencies seem to come in waves of twos and threes, constantly draining our emergency fund. But emergencies weren’t the only thing that got us.

The big expenses that managed to sneak up on us are what really gave us financial fits. That unusually high power bill two summers ago compliments of a prolonged heat wave. The annual car tag renewal I completely forgot about, even though it is due on my birthday every year. And each month it felt like we were always needing to replenish groceries and household items that were not on sale, or that we never had a coupon to use.

In an effort to sort of smooth out these financial highs and lows (well, mostly highs), we implemented the following relatively simple steps.

Sign up for levelized billing with your utility company. This was as easy as a phone call to our utility company and the completion of  simple form. “Levelized billing,” as it is commonly referred to, involves the utility company averaging your last 12 months of utility bills and using that average amount as your next bill due.

The beauty of this system is that your utility bill hovers around the same amount each month, even in the extreme highs and lows of summer and winter. A particularly high-usage month averaged against eleven previous months has little impact on the new amount due.

One note about levelized billing plans, utility companies require at least one year of history, and often require no late payments within that time.

Use a sinking fund for large annual expenses. We use sinking funds for those large, annual or semi-annual expenses, such as insurance premiums, taxes, etc. Rather than being hit by a $600 insurance bill at the end of the year, sock away $50 a month in a sinking fund at your favorite online savings account, and when the bill is due simply transfer the full amount to checking and pay the bill.

Watch for cyclical coupons and sales and stock up when prices are low. Coupons tend to run in cycles of 12 weeks or so, and often times grocers match sales to available coupons in an effort to attract shoppers.

For instance, a monthly P&G coupon circular is included in our newspaper around the first of every month. Flipping through the store sale ads you’ll likely find sales on P&G items to match up with those coupons.

It might also help to keep a price book. Jot down the price of items your household routinely purchases. Start tracking the cost each time you purchase, and soon you will be able to determine if that “sale price” is really a bargain. If it is, stock up, refuse to buy when prices are high, and wait until the price drops or a cyclical coupon is available again.

Do you ever stop to think how many of our decisions are based in fear? I’ve been doing it myself pretty much my entire life. While there is much to be afraid of these days, I hope to find the peace to begin making financial decisions for other reasons.

Finding that peace is an uphill battle thanks to entities like the media. I’m willing to bet none of us can go through an entire day without hearing about swine flu, a terror plot, identity theft, an airplane crash, a horrific car accident, a celebrity death, or a nefarious government conspiracy.

Traditional media does a great job of perpetuating their own motto, “If it bleeds, it leads,” but they aren’t alone. New media is getting in on the act, too. One of the hottest trends on the web the last week or so involved a website that shares death risk rankings. How inspiring.

This fixation on the negative has left us all in a constant state of worry. We live in a perpetual state of fear – of dying, of going broke, of losing our freedom, of losing a loved one, and on and on. Don’t believe me? Why do you think pharmaceutical companies, especially those with leading drugs for anxiety and depression, advertise heavily during the nightly news?

I’m not just picking on pharmaceutical companies. There are a number of industries whose main purpose is to sell consumers products that make them feel more secure. From life insurance, to identity theft protection, to those make-your-own last will and testament software providers, many companies exist to help alleviate your fears.

Those companies are not necessarily bad, and most of us in and around finances generally agree their products are a necessity (at least when it comes to insurance and wills). However, this fear bleeds into other areas of our financial lives.

How many of us are terrified of applying for a new credit card, or canceling our current credit cards, because of the impact it might have on the great FICO gods? It’s sad when we allow our behaviors to be dictated to us by some secret, highly-protected, highly-complicated algorithm dreamed up to dummy down lending decisions.

This thought occurred to me the other day as I paid off yet another old credit card account, from a company that had provided horrible customer service over the years. We had already introduced the credit card to our sharpest pair of scissors, and now I was ready to call and cancel the card.

As I’m dialing the customer no-service number I remembered the same advice I’ve given here at Frugal Dad before – don’t close your oldest credit card because length of credit history is an important factor in calculating your FICO score. Same for credit utilization, which would also be affected if I canceled this card with a high credit limit.

Thankfully, at that moment my common sense kicked in and I said out loud, “Screw FICO.” Blasphemous, I know. I’m not going to carry around this old account from a company I can’t stand just because it might affect my credit score. I’ll do business with whoever I want to, and for as long as I want to. I dialed the remaining numbers and canceled the credit card.  Good riddance!

I’ve also spent too much of my life obsessing over my finances. I’ve stayed awake at night counting credit card balances instead of sheep. I’m afraid of something happening to me, leaving my wife and kids without enough to survive. Do I have enough life insurance? Do I have enough in emergency savings? Do we have enough saved for the kids college plans? Will I ever be able to retire? The list of financial worries is endless.

At some point you just have to live your life. I’m not advocating throwing caution to the wind, burying your head in the sand, or not taking basic steps to secure you and your family’s future adequately. But I am advocating that we try to sort of put things on autopilot so we can stop worrying, and obsessing over our finances.

Over the last couple years, simplifying our financial life has been a big goal for us. We’ve consolidated accounts, set up automatic transfers where possible, put retirement savings on auto pilot. Besides periodic checks on balances or fund performance I rarely look at the “big picture” stuff. I focus on winning today, and being “present” for my kids. As long as we keep winning the daily battles with money, the “big stuff” will take care of itself in time.

Do you know how long you could survive if you or a spouse lost your job? What if you are like me and are the lone income provider – how long could your family live on savings alone? If you are not sure about the answers to these questions it is probably a good idea to conduct a financial fire drill.

The concept of a financial fire drill is based on the idea behind a real fire drill. It allows you to run through a real emergency before you have to act with smoke and flames. In the case of a financial fire drill, this means you will simulate a “what if” scenario so you’ll know what to do, and what things need to improve, before a real life financial emergency strikes.

Steps to Planning a Financial “Fire Drill”

1. Include the entire family. My family has a pretty good emergency plan. We all know where to meet in case a fire separates us in the middle of the night. We have a rendezvous point established for larger-scale emergencies, and even the kids are aware of actions to take based on various types of disasters. Similarly, the entire family should also be involved with a financial fire drill.

2. Gather a list of necessary expenses. These expenses are absolute necessities, so things like mortgage payments or rent, basic utilities like water, power, etc. (cable and Netflix memberships don’t count), and other basic expenses related to food, shelter, prescriptions, etc. Nothing else matters at this point.

3. Determine how much is in your “extended emergency fund.” A basic emergency fund is a pile of cash stored in an online savings account or local credit union. A typical goal for emergency funds is to save six months of household expenses just for emergencies. However, in a large emergency such as a job layoff or medical disability, you could likely tap other resources. Be sure to include any stocks or mutual funds not held in retirement, CDs (even if you had to pay a penalty), bonds and any other assets that could be converted to cash quickly. This total amount will represent your “extended emergency fund.”

4. Determine your maximum survivability (in months). Divide the amount of your extended emergency fund by the total expenses identified in step 2. This number represents the months you could survive without an income. For instance, let’s assume an average family of four needs about $2,000 a month to cover their mortgage, basic utility payments and food. If the same family has a $17,000 extended emergency fund, they could expect to make it about 8.5 months on savings.

5. Adjust for increased expenses. Unfortunately, expenses don’t always go down in an emergency. In fact, they rarely do go down, despite your best efforts to cut expenses to the bone. Things like continued health insurance premiums under COBRA, or other medical expenses, can cause spikes in spending categories otherwise in check. Make adjustments to your prediction based on these estimates. To show how much impact these “surprise expenses” can have, in our example above the same family could only survive five months or so with a $1,000 COBRA premium added to their $2,000 in household expenses.

6. Conduct a financial fire drill regularly. Armed with all the facts and figures required, it’s time to pull the alarm and practice getting out safely. Since laying yourself off is not exactly a smart idea, it is sufficient to simply pretend you just received your last paycheck. What expenses would you immediately target to be cut? Write them down, along with customer service phone numbers and terms. Repeat this exercise once a quarter or so and update your list accordingly.

The day you are laid off you may grab your list and make phone calls to the newspaper subscription department, your gym, your lawn service guy, Netflix, and the cable company. These moves alone could save you a couple hundred dollars a month in expenses not necessary to your survival, preserving precious emergency funds. Keep this list handy, and only break it in an emergency.

None of these steps will happen on their own. You must be proactive. Force yourself to sit down and run the numbers. If you don’t know how much COBRA might cost, find out. If you don’t know how much your health insurance plan’s deductible is under a major medical event, find out. Don’t wait until your exit interview to discover these new costs. Doing so would be like waiting until smelling smoke to map out an escape route.

This article appeared in the Frugal Living Blog Carnival on 9/4/2009