As you’ve started deciding your date money, spending money, gift fund, and emergency fund amounts you’re going to need a budget sheet to enter them into to keep track of things.

You can go online and download a spread sheet that works for you, look for ones that give you a good idea and create your own or you can email me and i’ll spend you a template of the one I use (like the one detailed see below or you can go to my blog and see a snap shot).

Steps To Success:

1) Enter all the “must haves” into your budget (making rows on the left of the spread sheet):

1) Groceries
2) Hydro
3) Rent/Mortgage
4) Insurance
5) Date Money
6) Emergency Fund
7) Gift Fund
8 ) His money, Her Money
9) Car Payments
10) Gas
11) Etc.

2) Add all the things specific for your family:

1) Kids Clothes
2) Makeup Money
3) Tool Money
4) Credit Card Debt
5) Loans
6) Giving (To your church, Sponsor Child, Fav Charity etc.)
7) Savings for a trip
8 ) Saving for your wedding

3) Create formulas to total all your expenses

4) Create a section over to to the right for your incomes that you can change every month if it is different (Amanda’s income: $XXX.XX, Marshall’s income $XXXX.XX etc.). This will help you adjust your budget accordingly if your earnings are lower or higher.

5) Create another formulas that takes your expenses out of your earnings. What you have left should always be in the positive, if it isn’t you need to adjust your budget until it balances. The goal is to always have some left; that being the amount you put into savings.

6) Create another section over to the right listing your different accounts (gift fund, emergency fund, savings, etc.) that you can update every time you add to them.

7) If you do a lot of your spending on a credit card create another section to the right where you enter each of your purchases and when they will be paid for. This will keep you from over spending, and see what you have already spend from each area in the month

8 ) To the right of each item in your master budget enter notes to help you know what you have done (e.g. Gift fund: Transferred, Groceries: Spend $44.45, Hydro: Paid with Master Card, etc.)

Being this detailed isn’t for everyone, and I know that. But if you are struggling with your finances and you’re wanting to get a good grip on things, and really figure out where you are going wrong this might be a good step for a while. It will for sure help you get a handle on what you’re really putting where.

Amanda

Captive Creativity