Budgeting Tips to Get out of Debt and Build Wealth

First a caveat, we are still new to this whole budgeting thing.  We are not experts, but we can point you to expert sources for starting your own family budget.  And we can give you a few basics.

• Your family budget doesn’t have to be perfect. A budget works best if it is revisited at least once a month, so don’t be a perfectionist the first time you set out to create one.  You can tweak it as you go along, and you will have to, because that’s how you get it to suit your needs and wants and goals.
• Work on your family budget with your spouse. If you are married, it is critical that both husband and wife are on the same page with the budget.  Also, when you work together it takes the stress of one member of the couple and becomes a marriage-building exercise.  In spite of the inevitable arguments that come up when money is the topic, you will grow closer by being a team when it comes to the family budget.  And it will have a chance of success if you both are working toward keeping your spending within the allotted amounts.
• Start by looking at your past spending. After largely ignoring paperwork last year, we found it helpful to sit down and enter all our expenses and income into Quicken.  It was very sobering to see “McDonalds” and “Pizza Hut” being entered over and over again, sometimes multiple times in one week.  We were wondering where all our money went, and this exercise made it pretty obvious, we were eating it.
• Assign line items in your family budget. Once you have some history of your spending (preferably a whole year), it should be simple to identify the line items, the areas you spend money on regularly or occasionally throughout a given year.  Remember to include a line item for emergency fund savings; you need to start building up a $1000-$2000 savings account to prevent yourself from incurring further debt the next time something unexpected crops up.
• Get Budgeting Help from the Experts. It can be very helpful to use the budgeting guides of financial gurus like Dave Ramsey, Larry Burkett or Phil Lenahan.  They help you figure out, for instance, how many cars your family can afford, or if you’re paying too much for your housing, etc.

The main thing is to just do it.  It’s never too late to start a family budget.

Posted By: Family Budget by Darcy