Family Budget
A budget can be a hard thing to stick to and when you add more people to your family the expenses list gets even bigger.
About a year ago my Husband and I were getting so sick of living week to week. Our savings account was decreasing while our debt was increasing. One night while I was blubbering away like a baby my Other Half suggested we look at our budget again. So that night we put the little Monkey to bed a little earlier, cracked out a bottle of wine and sat down to have a look over the budget. Needless to say I did not like what I saw.
First thing we noticed was that my budgeting skills were shocking! In fact shocking is an understatement. I had absolutely no budgeting skills and my Hubby was no better. My budget plan was "worry about the bill when it gets here", and that was definitely getting us no where and it was not a good way to support a family on a single income.
So we got out a piece of paper and wrote down the amount of all our bills and then worked out how much they would cost weekly. So obvious right? Well apparently not to us :-D
What I found very helpful was the direct payment function on internet banking. As far as I know most banks offer this option. Once I set that up to pay all my bills for me and transfer the weekly bill fund installments into a separate account I didn't have to worry about a thing. And it goes to say that I don't have any blubbering nights anymore... Well not about money anyway :-p
This is the table that I made up so that I could track all our money. Having it all written down helps you figure out how much left over you have and makes it easier to see were you can cut down your expenses. I have adjusted it a little to make it more versatile. Feel free to right click on it and 'save as' for personal use.
Tiffany.
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