Three times in the last month I’ve been asked the question, “what do I need to do to organise a gig?” In reality, when this question is asked it can mean several things: How do I find a venue? How do I sort out the PA? How do I get an audience? And so on.

But there is a stage before all of this: the budget. I would suggest that the moment you start thinking about organising an event you should write a budget. This budget spreadsheet informs you of most things that you will need to consider and will also show you the risk, projected profit and the breakeven point. A sample spreadshhet is available to download from this address http://www.josaka.com/features/2005/Organise-A-Gig/Event-PandL.pdf

If the budget numbers don’t look like they are working perhaps the event is not the right thing to be running. If you don’t like the level of risk, perhaps you aren’t cut out to be a promoter.

So the start point is a spreadsheet. This should include all costs and all incomes. The key headings for costs should include: performer cost, PA, lighting, venue hire, marketing, box office costs etc. The income is likely to be largely ticket sales but don’t forget the opportunity to add a sponsor to the event.

The spreadsheet will help you work out the breakeven point for the event i.e. how many tickets you need to sell to cover all costs. Every sale beyond breakeven is of course profit (exluding any box office commision). The added bonus of creating an event spreadsheet is that helps define all the key tasks to be performed.

The realisation of the forecasted numbers becoming actual figures suggests that all parties have got the deal they were looking for or agreed to. The sample speadsheet also illustrates that everyone else involved in the gig is largely earning a fixed fee and therefore the only person taking a financial risk is the promoter.

So if you are thinking of organising a live event I coomed you to work on the numbers first. This will help ensure you deliver a great show and have control over the money.

It is true that is always easier to skip planning, since it requires time, effort and checking how we managed versus what we initially planned. For example, if you go on picnic for barbecue it is the most easily just to get into a car and stop by to buy a few things. But when you get to your place, you can realize that you bought meat, but you forget spices, or that you bought coal but forget the grill. So, you must admit that some planning prior to your trip should be good.

Planning is important in every aspect of your life. Especially it is important because of your financial health. Without planning you will not have real control over your incomes and outcomes. Money will be just coming in and going away from you. Whether you will have money leftover or be in debt at the end of the month is only matter of coincidence.

You need to plan your personal finance in specific periods and to revise periods after they are gone. Example, you set up income and outcome plan for a month and after the month has ended you can check how was your spending and saving vs. plan. You will be amazed how much money you loose on trivial things, that you bought simply because you were probably bored at some moment and went for shopping, or you didn’t re-think before buying something.

As an example of personal planning it is good to take a look on finance planning of the companies. Business planning is very structured and rigid, but is highly effective. You do not need to be so strict, e.g. to sign allowance to your self and to take receipt just to go to watch some movie. But still you can learn a lot from Business planning model of financial management and apply it in your personal finances.

Business financial planning is divided in several dimensions. Time dimension covers a full year, divided in quarters and months. During the business planning mid term period of, for example, 3-5 years is considered for setting the strategic guidance. Second dimension is the balance sheet that have incomes on one side and expenses on other side of the sheet. At the bottom of the sheet some profit should be generated. The income side of the balance sheet should contain income channels, e.g. sales, interest rates, rent, royalties, … The expense side should have budget lines with allowance for different purposes, e.g. utility costs, salaries, investments, raw material…

This should give you a glimpse into the structural approach of financial management that you can use for your personal financial planning.

First, define your time periods and goals for every period. You do not need to specify goals too accurately, but at least set them roughly.

- Short term – Monthly Financial Planning should be the basic period, simply because usually you receive salary in monthly periods, as well usual monthly bills. Try to make monthly plan by setting the goal in term of spending. Probably you cannot make too big changes on income side in a single month.

- Long Term – Annual Financial Planning should cover summary of the monthly plans. But at same time you should expand your perspective toward investment of saving, as well as setting goals to construct auxiliary income source.

- Strategic Planning – Is the long term e.g. 5 – 20 years financial planning where you should include planning of capital expenditures like a car, house, scholarship, retirement plan, …

Now, since you got basic of temporal planning, try to involve some tools in your planning. You do not need some sophisticated accounting software. You can use simple tools like excel sheet.

Try to record your financial traffic in your personal accounting tool as much as possible. These records will help you to identify budget leaks, meaning expenditures that are not that necessary. At same time you will have a chance to plug these leaking holes in your budget.

In time, you will perceive you own financial flows from higher perspective. This strategic perspective will develop your sense for financial management. It might be unpleasant at first, since it is easier to close one eye and to spend without to much thinking. Still, personal financial management requires some discipline.

Try to identify your financial areas of improvements. For beginning use easily achievable targets e.g. save 100

WHY DO WE PREPARE BUDGETS?
Our reasons for making or preparing a budget could be any of the following :

To be able to estimate our income for the period and as well plan our expenses to be within it.

To plan our expenditure and assess whether or not we will be able to cover for it from our income.

To compare the income and planned expenses or expenditure and decide whether there is going to a surplus or deficit (cash shortages).

To plan how to invest the surplus or make a plan to borrow to cover any shortages in funds requirements Budgets are good aids to planning and complement our profit attainments in the case of business organisations.

A simple budget will cover the following issues such as for an individual.

REVENUES
1. Salary x
2 profits / incomes x
3 other income x
4 Total xx

EXPENDITURE

1. Food x
2 Drinks x
3 Car / Travel x
4. Rent / Etc X
5. Total xx

Surplus (Deficits ) x

From the above we have assumed that the individual has only three possible sources to earn money or income within the period covered by the budget.This period could refer to a day, week, month, quarter, half year or yearly budgets. We also have assumed four items to of expenditure to spend the income on during the period.

From that we could introduce simple situations to show further that when the monthly budget for December was prepared it gave an income of $1000 with planned expenditure at $1500.

What does this mean. Simple, our friend or business will need to borrow a further $500 to be able to operate on at activity level or achieve the budgeted expenses.

In a recession burrowing can be made more difficult as cash crunch and squeezes are the watch words. How then are we going to cope with an understanding of our budget cash position. We are either going to borrow to meet our needs or reduce our plan by trying to scale down our expenses through a form of budget cut. A cut on our expenses may be an alternative to full borrowing during a recession as scarce fund may not make the excess finance required to be available.
We may learn to operate on tighter costs that may in the above example make us to borrow only $200 dollars instead of $500.

Even the simple analysis above can be used by businesses / companies to prepare periodic budgets while extending the contents of their income and expenditure. We may also complement the budget by preparing a statement of Cash Budget to fix their budgets.In a depressed economy you must be constantly on the look out for alternative funding hence part time/ full time internet marketing will be helpful.

Needacarlowincome.com (Jun. 13th, 2009) – Usually, people who have low incomes are excluded from the affordable mainstream financial services. In most cases, low income families are relying on some more expensive forms of credit, or they are simply going without all the items that they are in such a need. The situation is the same when we are talking about cars. Low income families or simply low-income individuals are finding it hard to get auto financing adequate to their low income. This can be seen as a normal situation, and also we must not forget the fact that us, along with the rest of the globe, are living some hard times because of the economic recession.

In order to target this entire segment of the low-income persons, Banks and Car Lease companies have created programs suitable for them. Nowadays, anyone can get a car loan, even the persons that are not earning so much. With these kinds of car loans the companies can be able to assist many of these low-income families to borrow money in order to have their cars of their dreams. We all know that cars can help people to go to work, start a business or even help them with the increased mobility offered by these cars. Also, the persons who are suffering from bad credit can find answers to their financial questions at the Car Loan, or directly to the Car Lease Companies. Bad credit car financing and low-income loans represent the solutions in our cases that we have presented here. In addition, all this important segment of the population can overcome the poverty traps that are associated with the financial exclusion of the traditional car lease & loan. Until we will get out from the economic crisis, there must be other solutions for the ones that are really in need.

Do not forget about profiting from the government benefits, in the case you are a little bit skeptical regarding the bad credit or no credit car loan companies. The problems generated by not having a credit rating or a low income can be fought by using these “tools”. The word “tools” may sound a little bit inappropriate, but if we are speaking about finance and economy, it is good to try to be accustomed and use the technical terminology, which represents the appropriate thing to do.

In these days, it does not matter so much if you have problems because of the low income or if you are not paying in time all the debts. As stated above, any CAR Lease or Car Loan company will help you get your dream car, because this is their business. Initially, you as a client will find all as attractive, but before you will sign the papers for your car loan, or directly for your car, read carefully. There is a big chance that you will be scammed a little bit, by simply having bigger interest rates after a couple of months. This is why we are suggesting you to visit first the websites of the no credit car loan and bad credit car loan companies. Be 100% sure that you know all the details of your loan contract before you will sign it. Do not forget the fact that all these details are written so small, that most of the people are signing these contacts without even reading and knowing them.

In conclusion all these companies are a benefit for the people with financial problems or issues, but they need to be taken with some skepticism and precautions, because we are talking about money and papers that need to be signed. Take all serious and you will not regret it.