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I hope this is not to personal of a question but I was wondering if anyone has a monthly bidget layed out for their family? I anyone does could you give a basic example for your budget process. As always thanks in advance for your replys. Jray [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]
We are followers of Dave Ramsey. If you do a search on Yahoo, you will find his site. He also has a radio show and classes and seminars are available. On his radio show, he details the budget process over and over, usually several times a week. There is enough detail that you can understand how it is done without the classes or seminars. I think the classes are basically for people who want a little more detail or someone to personally look at their numbers and help them.
The process is quite simple. You add up all of the bills that you have to pay each month. Phone, lights, heat, food, etc. Some of these are essential (heat in January), some are luxury (cable/satellite), some are maintenance (clothes). Then you look at the amount of money coming in. Assuming there is enough money to cover the bills, you are fine. Any extra money goes for emergency fund, IRA, vacation, etc. Just remember, real luxuries like vacations and toys only come after everything else is paid.
Steve
Ditto shf's input. The book "Personal Finance for Dummies" isn't too bad. Much easier reading than most financial books. Also, Quicken software has a number of budget features and is a great tool to track how you are doing against your budget [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
On payday my wife and i put all our money on the kitchen table. We both grab a handfull and throw it in the air. Whatever sticks to the ceiling is mine. The rest is for her budget to spend. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Ok Ok ill be serious. My bring home pay after taxes,dedutions and 401-k is just over 600 a week unless we are working over time then its more [img]/forums/images/icons/cool.gif[/img] 300.00 goes directly into the checking acount and this covers all our bills excluding car insurance. The rest goes into the savings. My wife is a stay home mom and day care provider and claims her pay to Uncle Sam also. She earns about 400.00 a week give or take depending if all her children are here. She pays for food and our entertainment the kids school stuff and what ever else we need like gas for truck and van. My fuel and upkeep on my TRACTOR [img]/forums/images/icons/cool.gif[/img] She normally has 100 left by the end of the week and in the savings it goes. Or to walmart on her shopping spree's [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img] Basicly she takes care of all the bills and money. She's done a exellent job for the last 20 years..so ill give it to her for the next 20. To answer the post the wife would have to give all the details all i know is 300 a week of my pay does it all for the most part. I k now this because lots of new stuff in the home shows up every week from her pay.
All i know is i pretty much have all the toys i want. And when i need somthing or want [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] I ask her if we have the money and she says..mmmm go for it [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] Does she ask me when she wants something....heck NO [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]
i know this dont help, but i had fun replying [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]
Larry
Since my income fluctuates wildly sometimes I don't 'budget' in the conventional sense. I pretty much just pay the bills and go from there.
One thing I can offer is a suggestion I try to follow myself. That is to pay yourself first. I know this sounds contrary to budgeting, but it really isn't. Take the first 10-15% of your income and put it away for yourself and live on the rest. If you have a 401K, max it out first then do the same with your IRA. There are also some great college savings plans (529, I believe) if you have children. There are a lot of books I could recommend if you want to email me here. Good luck. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
Folks:
Wait till you retire. The $50k drop in the buget was hard to adjust to but in reality wasn't as much as it seems as the taxes are a lot lower. The biggest problem will be replacing major items and aquireing new toys without having to dip into the retirement fund for rainy days.
Egon
<font color="blue"> That is to pay yourself first. I know this sounds contrary to budgeting, but it really isn't. Take the first 10-15% of your income and put it away for yourself and live on the rest. </font color>
Gary, that is the best advise anyone can give. Jane and I did that for 31 years and it allowed us to build a very nice retirement. The first few years it was really difficult but once you set up the system and don't even think of tapping it for any reason it grows quickly. Some people will say that they can't put that much away but you just need to forget you have it to spend. I had the money taken out of my check by my employer so I never saw it.
I budget in a global sense - $X for expenses in major categories on an annual basis and $Y expected income for the year, but don't do a formal line item monthly budget. I track all expenses and income in MS Money and check my forecast vs. actual on a YTD basis every month. By doing this I can see if I am on track.
Through doing this over the past several years I am able to forecast my non-discretionary expenses including the "un-planned" variety pretty well. I'm careful to try to capture every expense - every credit card purchase goes in and is properly categorized, cash expenses are tracked closely. For 2002 I can track back to specific purchases 98% of all the dollars which flowed through our household.
Gary's comment about paying yourself is very good. You need to be both saving for retirement and also for a rainy day. Treat these savings as a non-discretionary expense and they will start to build up pretty quickly.
The first step in setting a budget is to determine where your money is going now. You can list in an excel schedule or a columnar pad what you think you are spending on certain categories, but when you do, you'll find that its not accurate. You are actually spending more.
Use Quicken or MS Money to track by categories, then figure out where you can make cuts and set your budget by categories from that. And then stick to it.
I wanted to say thanks to all for responding all this info will definitely help in the future. Jray [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
I put all my monthly bills in a hat and shake it up real good. One by one I draw them out and write a check. When the check balance is zero I quit writing. If my creditors start getting nasty I explain the process and if they don't start being nicer, I will stop putting their name in the hat.
My father-in-law ( a real rocket scientist who worked with Von Braun) bought me a book that was put out by Esquire magazine. It was titled " What Every Young Man Should Know." Among the many pearls of wisdom was a hard times bill delaying method where you make out all the checks and address all the envelopes but put checks in the envelopes at random. The recipients will likely NOT get together to sort things out and will assume you made a good faith mistake and only turned two mailings around. Even if the butcher (who got the candle stick makers check) tries to swap, it won't work because the baker got the butcher's check and so forth. This, of course is just a delaying tactic. I mention this mostly for humor.
Budgeting: My wife is a retired Budget Analyst with 30 years financial experience. She seems to spend a fair amount of time entering info into her Excell spreadsheets from which she can sometimes answer my questions regarding how much goes for x, y, and z or how much is available to build the house we are building or whatever. I realize it may be too late for you to find and court a budget analyst but it is one option.
Actually, we share the financial planning. I am heavy in the strategic planning (long time horizon stuff) She asserts herself some in the midrange planning (usually less than a year time horizon) and we both are over our waders in operational planning (day to day not to exceed a week time horizon)
As far as debt ratios, how much to reserve for various contingencies, (what about long term care) we muddle through with a little less planning than the planners but have made out for nearly 40 years of marriage. I'll know a lot more about budgeting in two years as the surplus of money we are sitting on from the sale of our previous house (and a lot more) will have been spent builing the current house project and I will be trying to get by on retirement pay.
Patrick