A Monthly Budget Fit for your Family

April 18, 2008

If you don’t have concrete budget for your family, there are more chances of you being in a situation of having you and your family short of funds and you’re just left with wondering where all the money go. Many may just think that they can do away with budgeting, to just pay a bill when needed and hope that there would be enough money to make purchases. This kind of habit may just lead to large credit card debt as unexpected expenses occur and there would be not enough cash to deal with them. Because of this, more and more people are relying on their credit card to take the dealing when they fall short of cash. So having a sensible and concrete budget to adhere to will help you learn to manage your money and make you realize where your money is actually going to. You would take notice of the unnecessary and stop relying on credit cards to help you out when actually it is pulling you even further down.

Use a spreadsheet program or a money management software that will often come with a pre installed to have a permanent home where in you will make your new budget, also, don’t forget to make entries and to save receipts when you make purchases so you can keep track of your actual spending. In this manner, you can look back on the months and see where you spent most of your money on and where you can afford to make some reductions. Some software would even alert you when it’s time to pay a bill and would even make suggestions for your savings.

The first thing you would have to do is know exactly how much you are earning or how much income is coming in on a monthly basis. Add all of your paychecks and income from other sources so you would get the exact amount that will accumulate to the same amount each month.

The first items that you would need to fix in a certain amount are the fixed rates of payment that you need to pay every month. For example, rent, mortgage, utility bills, loan payments etc. Next would be setting aside a reasonable amount for other expenses like groceries, clothing and entertainment. It would be a must to keep your self from over spending on miscellaneous expenses as small amounts can add up real quickly, that can leave you short at the end of the month that you would need to wipe out your credit card again.

Once you have added up all the bills you are accounted for, set a side a little amount for things that may come up unexpectedly like certain emergencies. Then as much as possible, put aside as huge as you can possibly put in your savings account. If you have the specific amount to put in every month then that would be great and if you have extra to put in your savings as well. When all of your expenses have been budgeted it is clear to see how crucial it is to have savings and how important it is to manage your money in order to save something as well as be responsible with your spending.

If you are in debt, the best way to crawl out of that situation is to accumulate in your pre-budget days and to overpay your minimum payments as much as possible. A good way to practice is to add whatever interest fee is for the month to your minimum payment. In this manner, you will be able to pay on top of your interest and your balance will go down instead of being affected by the minimum payment. Think of it this way, that credit cards don’t want you to pay quickly because they make more money when you stall in payment or if you just keep paying the minimum so the minimum payment is often just too small to make not much of a difference at all.

To top it all would be being able to stick to the budget guns and reassure that the whole family is aware of the plan. If you choose to, you can also allocate a budget to miscellaneous amounts towards expenses to each member of family so that when an allocated amount is spent already, then the family should just wait for the next month’s allocation for that fund. This will help tame impulsive buying and teach your youngsters about finances and how to value money.

Overall, each family wants to be able to save because this savings can be a needed fund for a well earned vacation, an early start for college funds, or just have some money stashed when needed for emergencies and unexpected bill or a rainy day. Money saving can be put up really easy without altering so much of your everyday life. Even saving as little as 20 dollars a week adds up to an extra 1040 dollars a year. You will quickly see how fast money can add up and in no time you will be saving up so much money that you thought you could, or you would realize that you can actually save for something that you thought at first was unrealistic.

Food Bill:

Every family has a night in a week where they either go out and eat, order take out or just have something delivered. To eat out for as many as 4 people can add up to a cost of $60. Even just ordering pizza can run for as much as $25 dollars. Multiply this by four times a month can be alot. So trying to cut down on it to just having dinner out at least once a month can help you save even more.

Instead of you buying lunch everyday in a cafeteria, try having your wife or bringing your own lunch instead of spending $5 to $6 dollars a day multiplied by at least 20 days can be a lot. You try and make lunches the night before so you won’t have to squeeze in the morning when the kitchen is in chaos. Pack lunches for children if possible, this can be a great deal for saving.

Use coupons if you must in grocery and stick to a list of what you need to buy for food. If there are flyer available that promotes sale on certain items, avail of the products that you usually use.

You can also find that you’ll be able to save a lot when you don’t purchase coffee everyday, but instead bring your own coffee or thermos where you can place your coffee. If not at least a mug so you can make your own coffee at work.

Entertainment Cost:

A single trip to the movie house with your family and have pop corn for each can be as much as $40 already. An amusement park visit bringing a family of four can be $200 already. These are the activities that families usually enjoy doing together. However there are other ways of enjoying time together without spending as much. You can rent movies and just buy microwavable popcorn to munch on while watching a movie in the living room. If you can minimize going to the amusement park that would be great, but if not you can get family season’s passes to save on some cash. You can also opt to place out door games where you can your family can have a picnic in a park. Minimizing extravagant trips will enable the members to appreciate it more.

Clothing Cost:

Buying clothes is an extravagant store can easily be abstained. Instead of buying your family an entire season of clothes, try looking for clothes in consignment or thrift stores. You can also consider buying clothes in retail outlet malls for designer clothing at a lower price.

So saving money is not as difficult as you may think, it is and once you get the hang of it, you can actually see the reward of it later on. Seeing the output of saving can get you on a natural high of saving even more. Little alterations in the way can lead to greater savings and is healthy for your family in the long run. You can also have a stronger communication with your family as you and family try to think of activities and do team work when saving.

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