Budget Blog Part 2
If you’re like me and want to go a bit deeper into a family budget or want to get real serious about where your money is going and where you can make cutbacks, then keep reading for how I set up our family budget.
My Budget. I’m just beginning my 4th year of having
a proper family budget. Before then I just had rough estimates in my head of
where I wanted our money to go. Since that first financial year 4 years ago my
budget has gone from a simple, admittedly not very good budget, to a more
complex one that is easy to see where our money goes and I can make quick
comparisons to the same time frame of the year before.
4 years ago I got bored, seriously, that’s how this all
started. I was bored, I was (and still am) a stay at home mum, and I really
wanted to start kicking ass financially. So I decided to sit down and see where
all our money seemed to be vanishing too.
Before you keep reading and realise how OCD I am, don’t get
freaked out. It may seem like a lot of work but I actually haven’t changed much
in my day to day life. The biggest change I’ve made is saying ‘yes’ when asked
if I would like a receipt at the checkout.
So here goes, step by step how our family budget is set up.
1.
I have 3 bank accounts. Savings, Every day and
Direct Debits
2.
I have a budget book (you could use a computer
program like Excel but I’m old school and I like writing it all down) I’m
currently using the Wildon Family Budget Planner from Office Works which costs
$5.85
3.
Now you need to set up your budget book. It
takes about 5 minutes I promise! The headings I use are
·
Groceries
·
Non Essential (Junk) Groceries
·
Essentials
·
Non Essentials
·
Vet
·
Petrol
·
Eating Out
·
Medical
·
Clothes and Accessories
·
Tools
·
Direct Debits account fortnightly amount
·
Kids Accounts/Savings.
Obviously if your husband isn’t a mechanic that constantly
buys tools you won’t need that. If you don’t have pets there’s no need for the
vet heading. Try and categorise everything you spend money on into just a few
headings. Non Essential Groceries is things like chips, juice, and biscuits
etc.-basically junk food that you don’t NEED. Essentials are day to day things
that you need like if you need a new frying pan or a new piece of furniture,
back to school essentials etc. Non Essentials for us is things like going out
to the movies, buying new books or DVD's, beer, toys, money spent at a fair
etc. Medical for us includes medications, Dr visits, when we have a flu
outbreak and stock up on things like Vicks etc. The rest are pretty
self-explanatory.
4.
I also have a weekly subtotal and year to date
running total column
5.
Once you have your budget book set up with your
headings it’s time to fill it all in. I have a new page for each new pay cheque
and throughout the fortnight I collect receipts for EVERYTHING. Even that $5
morning coffee. Hubby does too-it took a while for him to catch on but now he’s
better at me than remembering to get receipts. At the end of each day spend 5
minutes (or less depending on how much you spent that day) jotting down the
amounts for each receipt in your budget book.
6.
At the end of each pay fortnight add up the
fortnightly totals and update the year to date totals for each category. This
takes me no more than 10 minutes at night time when the kids are in bed.
And that’s pretty much it. Less
than 5 minutes per day and then at the end of the pay period another 10 minutes
to do a few calculations. Easy!!
At the end of the financial year
I then print out a list of all our expenses with the year to date totals. It is
amazing to see how much money you can spend each year!! And this way I can
quickly look back at the year before totals and compare if we actually are
making the savings we want.
The next part in this series of
Budgeting posts is all about our direct debit account. What exactly we set
money aside for and how it works for us-also a great way to keep the banks
happy J
No comments:
Post a Comment