So you made the New Years resolution of setting up a household budget and sticking to it. But where to start? We created our basic household budget worksheet that is easy to follow without a whole lot of graph’s and complicated data entry.
To get things started you will need to pull together all your recurring bills and your latest bank statement. We found by simply looking at our last bank statement our budget was totally wacky because we never realized how much we spent on “Miscellaneous” expenses. Our regular recurring expenses like mortgage, car payments, insurance and utilities were always they only bills that came to mind.
Some liberties we made as we created the worksheet we assumed everyone gets paid bi-weekly so there are three pay periods to address an additional pay cycle during that odd month. The worksheet also uses the principle of paying yourself first so the very first expense you pay is into your savings to build an Emergency fund. Your emergency fund should equal 3-6 months of your month income to provide funds in the case of an unexpected illness, job loss or other large expense such as the transmission going out in your car. Most feel a credit card is an emergency fund and end up pay enormous amounts in interest.
Download Template Here
Next is your ongoing household expense that include your Mortgage / Rent, utilities and home maintenance. Notice we did not include revolving debt such as credit cards and student loans. These are categorized in the miscellaneous category because our goal is to become debt free.
Transportation is the next category followed by daily living expenses to provide categories to isolate each expense. All the data entry is fairly straightforward to created a method to track your expenses and give every dollar a name. At the end of each month the ending balance will carry over automatically into the next month.
Last category is the miscellaneous expenses and this is where most waste our hard earned money. The goal is to have this category with a $0.00’s because this is where you can start to build long-term wealth.
We hope this annual budget worksheet is helpful as you pursue financial independence and become the money manager for your family. Download Template Here
Thanks,
Shane