A budget is a strategy for making calculations over a specified period, generally a year or a month, that are typically financial.
A budget may include projected sales and revenue levels, resource quantities such as time, costs, and expenses, environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, other impacts, assets, liabilities, and cash flow. Budgets help businesses, governments, families, and other groups describe their strategic plans of action in quantifiable terms.
An expressed budget includes suggestions for how to allocate resources to cover planned expenditures. A budget can show a surplus, which reserves resources for use later, or a deficit, which occurs when expenses exceed income or other available resources.
A budget typically includes the following components:
- Income
- Expenses
- Fixed expenses
- Variable expenses
- Savings
- Financial goals
