A friend our ours is helping me with a family budget. I have known how to budget, but could never make it practical enough to function. He asked me to create a yearly budget on our net income. In order to do that, I had to make a monthly budget first, then add the once a year payments to the plan.
From there I backtracked and made a month-long budget that suited our needs. The bad part was that there wasn't enough in the month-long budget to make ends meet. So I whittled away at the food budget, gave myself a maximum amount of gas that could be spent, and the numbers lined up.
If you aren't able to make ends meet each month, give yourself a maximum for the food budget each week and carry your calculator. Then with the gas, make yourself adhere to the gas allowance. There may be a place in your monthly expenditures that is a little excessive. Find and and make your cut.
There is nothing like seeing how much you spend on eating out for a year. Ouch!
From there I backtracked and made a month-long budget that suited our needs. The bad part was that there wasn't enough in the month-long budget to make ends meet. So I whittled away at the food budget, gave myself a maximum amount of gas that could be spent, and the numbers lined up.
If you aren't able to make ends meet each month, give yourself a maximum for the food budget each week and carry your calculator. Then with the gas, make yourself adhere to the gas allowance. There may be a place in your monthly expenditures that is a little excessive. Find and and make your cut.
There is nothing like seeing how much you spend on eating out for a year. Ouch!
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