Making A Budget Part 1

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First, let me say that staying at home is not easy, nor is it glamorous. We tend to do so much in one day that it is the same kind of stress if we are working, sometimes more. We do a thousand different jobs and it never ends. It is worth it though to be there with your children as they grow. One main thing we need to do is budget our money that our partner makes to make ends meet. Here is a basic budget you can follow and build upon. This budget is great for any family in any situation. It will take choices and sacrifices at some points, but once you free up some money, just think of the amount of stress you are losing. No one needs to be stressed for money. We do it to ourselves 75% of the time and life does it to us the other 25%. 

Steps to Set up a Budget:

 

Step 1: For a month save all receipts and write down/print off any online transactions. No exceptions.

Step 2: Sit down with your significant other and bring all bills, debts, and receipts to the table. This will give you a visual of what actually is happening with your finances. Make sure to check your credit on places such as credit karma for any debts you may have forgotten about. Using a Budget Binder to keep all bills, receipts, and budgets in will help! 

Step 3: Figure out how much you bring in a month at the low end. This way you always have the min. 

Step 4: Start your budget with only the necessities first. House, transportation, food (includes school lunches) and utilities.  (Utilities includes health insurance and life/term insurance) These are bills you must pay to survive day to day. Eating out is not part of your food costs. 

Step 5: Subtract your necessities from your minimum income to see what you have left. This will be what you have left to budget for savings, school activities, clothes, eating out and others. 

Step 6: Next is to pay any minimums you have to keep paying such as credit cards and other active debts.

Step 7: Set a number that you want your savings to be at. For our family, it is one month of basic necessities plus enough for any unexpected car repairs. We like to keep a min. of $2000 in savings. 

Step 8: Next is items and activities for your kids and school. This will include clothes, school supplies, extracurriculars and field trips. Save some each month for these expenses before they happen so that way you are not paying all at once out of a check. 

Step 9: Make sure to set aside some money for your clothes as well. Luckily we don’t grow as much as our kids. 

Step 10: Since you may want a date night now in then, budget it for it. We save $10-20 a month for a date night. Usually to a drive through movie, order pizza and rent a movie at home while kids are asleep or at grandma/pa’s house and sometimes for a dinner at Applebee’s. (We always find ways to make out dates fit our budget with coupons and specials) 

Step 11: Now if you eat out a lot. Definitely, take a hard look at how many times you do and how much you are spending. You can free up so much money on eating out less and making meals in batches or having ingredients on hand for quick meals. Slowly start cutting this amount down. We put our eating out money on gift cards to keep us on track. 

Step 12: If you have any money left over after this each month, put it in savings!

This gives you a place to start. I will be writing another post on more you can do for your budget once this is set up and implemented. Please do this for 4-6 months. You should never make drastic changes and hope they stick.  If you need help couponing check out this post!