Your Family Budget: The 3 Basic Steps To Do It Right
If you are reading this article then your financial situation is probably in pretty bad shape and you want to change it. Don’t we all? One of the main reasons that people don’t even attempt to make a budget (there are other simpler reasons why they don’t implement it) is that they think it is a very complicated process to make a family budget. They reason, “If I can’t succeed why even try?” I understand their reasoning but it is not really so complicated. In this article I will show you the 3 basic elements of a family budget and how to do them.
To make an effective family budget there are only three things you have to know; your income, your expenses, and how to bring about and keep that your expenses become less than your income. That’s all there is too it. But you have to make sure that you know exactly these three things, rough estimates based on your feelings and not solid data is not acceptable. Without cold numbers our mind plays too many tricks on us. Once your income is greater than your expenses then you will enjoy financial security. The question only is; how to do this?
The first step to doing this is to track ALL of your expenses for about a month. This means to record; what goes out of your bank account (such as your mortgage or your insurance payments) , what you buy in the grocery store, what you spend on entertainment, what you spend on transportation, etc. You can write it on pieces of papers and save them in your pocket, your wallet, or your pocket book. If you want you can put it into a spread sheet on your computer. It makes no difference. The only thing that is important is that you write down somewhere where every penny goes.
At the same time, track and write down all of your incomes; pay checks, presents, stock dividends. Any money that you receive has to be written down.
The third step is, that at he end of the month write down (or enter into your computer) all of these figures into 4 columns. Write in the first column on what you spent your money. In the next column, corresponding to the first one, how much money was spent for each thing. After that in the next column from where you got money. And in the last column; how much money you received. Tally both of these columns and see which one is bigger. If the total of your income is bigger than your expenses, then you are in good shape. If not, then you have to see where you can cut your expenses or raise your income.
Start today tracking and recording all of your expenses. It might be a little annoying in the beginning, but it isn’t at all overwhelming. After a few months of doing this you will feel less annoyed at the process and the more you adjust your expenses to be less than your income you will be able to begin to live a happy life of financial security.
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