A family budget is used to chart the spending of a family considering the family members and regular needs of the family. Even though it is the primary responsibility of the parents to create a family budget, each and every member of the family must know how to make it. Using a family budget, every member of the family learns to how to spend money intelligently. You can save money for your future needs, if you make full use of a family budget. You can keep track of your every purchase you make in 30 days, every month and limit them as needed for the rest of your life.
A family budget usually consists of three columns, they are income and expenses column, planned expenses column and actual expenses columns. The rows in the family budgets are usually the name of the items under income and expenses like income, utilities, mortgage etc. The rows under planned and actual expenses remain blank. It should be filled up by the budget planner in order to implement his budget plans. At the end of the planner, there is a row to total all the expenses and subtract it with income to get your final budgeting results.
Creating a family budget is an easy task but to make a full use of it you need to follow some instructions. By following the step by step instruction you can easily create a family budget and implement the family budget. The step by step instructions are given below:
Step1
First of all, you can create a family budget by printing a template from the internet and writing on it manually. But you use computer programs like excel to avoid errors, since it involves calculations.
Step2
The next thing you need to do is designing the family budget template. You can follow a simple downloaded template or create it yourself using excel. The family budget template found on the internet can be used to customize it to your desired needs.
Step3
Create columns of income and expenses, planned expenses and actual expenses.
Step4
List all the items of sources of your monthly income and expenses you are probably going to incur during the month. The list includes your income sources and expenditures like utilities, mortgage, food, health, education etc.
Step5
Leave the planned expenses and actual expenses column blank for now.
Step6
Make sure to create a row to total expenses and savings at the end the Income and Expenses column.
Step7
Set up formula in the excel sheet so that it calculates in real time. Now input all he amounts in the planned expenses as you want with a target to minimize you expenses..
Step8
Input all the actual costs as soon as you have paid for them during the month. At the end of the month when you have filled up all your blank columns of your actual expenses you can see your results of family budget.
Step9
Considering you have setup all the formula, you now can see the amount of your total expenses and savings. This is just the beginning now you can get a detailed view of what expenses you must minimize and continue it the same way for the next month.
1
For the first month after recording all your income and expenses you just get a detailed view of your expenses. You have to minimize all your actual expenses in order to benefit from family budget plan. Sticking to your planned expenses can reduce your expenditure to save for your future needs.
2
You can highlight your expenses in the family budget excel sheet for some expenses which you can reduce. Adding your personal notes to the expenses cells can also help you further in recording expenses incurred.
3
You must consider the number of your family members and their desired needs to be fulfilled within the family budget plan.
4
There are always money needed in emergency situation therefore you must set goals and also write them in the excel sheet in your preferred column or row. For example goals can be to “reduce expense by $500” or “save for college education”.
5
Lastly, the amounts you input must be exact and error free for better assessment of your income and expenses.
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