How to Make a Family Budget
How to make a budget
Budget. Many people are intimidated just by the word. Actually making a budget is fairly easy. The tough part is sticking to it. In this article I hope to show you how to make a budget and give you an idea as to how to stick to it.
The first thing you need to do is find out your monthly take home pay. For the example that I am going to use, it is a married couple with 2 kids. The take home pay for the household is $3,000 per month. They put $3,000 at the top of the page and then begin deducting expenses.
Income $3,000. Less food $480 ($30 per person per week) leaves $2,520.
Rent/house payment $750; utilities $250 (gas, light, water, sewage, telephone) leaves $1,520.
Car payments $600 (2 at $300 each); gas $160 ($20 per week per car); car insurance $80; license plates $40. That will leave $640.
Clothes $50, Life insurance $40 (2 term life insurance policies); insurance deductible $200. They are now down to $350.
Fun money $80 ($10 per week for each spouse); kids allowance $40 ($5 per kid per week). They are now down to $230.
Charity $150 (5% of take home pay). That leaves $80 per month to pay other bills. It is very important to give to a church or charity and it should be at least 10% but as you can see by this example, this couple does not yet have 10% available.
Now that they have a budget, the question is "how do they stick to it?" The easiest way to stick to a budget is to simply pay cash for everything. If you do not have cash in your pocket, don't buy it! That means no more credit cards. Use only debit cards, checks and cash. The most effective is to simply use cash.
If you want to find out how to reduce debt and be able to get rid of your credit cards and pay cash for everything, I suggest you go to daveramsey.com.
Make a budget and help your family
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