Family Budget..not here...yet...



This is an area that my family has a difficult time with.

We are a want-it-now-buy-it-now kind of family. 

We are trying desperately to change that mindset but it's pretty hard.

Saving money is not fun!

We really REALLY have to buy a new house somewhere in the next 1-2 years. We have totally outgrown our house being there are 7 of us in here.

So...saving money is something we REALLY REALLY need to be doing.

Honestly our savings account probably has less that $100 in it...insert big horrified gasps here...

We typically live paycheck to paycheck and that is no fun either. All of our bills are always paid and we always have what we need...and most of the time what we want also...

But we want more for our family. We are a one income household. My husband works his butt off every day to provide the kind of life we want. But the life we want to live now isn't allowing for the life we need to be living.

A few months ago I bought a finance/budgeting software and I sat down and figured everything out. Exactly what money needed to go where and how much we could be putting into savings every month. Now if we had followed that budget I had planned out we would have about $1500 in savings. That's not alot but it's a start.

But the kid's wanted scooters, I wanted a treadmill, Drew wanted new PS3 games...and of course we wanted all the "cute" things for the baby. So needless to say we spent, spent, spent....

Then tax time came. We got a decent sized refund back and had planned to use that to pay down some debt. But did we? No...we bought a new feather mattress topper and  feather pillows among other things.

Why we can't stop spending money and actually save some baffles me.

I'm planning (again) to come up with a new budget and implement it at the beginning of the month. And pray to God to give us the will power and strength to stick to it and help us overcome this problem we have.

I have hope that we can do it and get on the right track. We want to have a sizeable down payment for a new house and we need it sooner rather than later.

Do you have a budget for your family? How easy/hard is it for you to stick to it? Any suggestions to help us out?

Ashley


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We are also a one-income household and I don't have any fancy software, but I keep track of all of our expenses on an excell spreadsheet, with different categories for everything. This way I know almost exactly what is going to come out every month and can plan ahead. It took me a few months to figure out how much money needed to be allotted to each category, so it was not perfect at first. As far as our personal spending, I give us each our own "pot" of money for any extra things we want, as well as one for house/organization (say we want a prettier ceiling fan or need some rubbermaid storage tubs), and if we want anything extra it comes out of our pot. It makes you think more before you buy, because you have a certain amount that needs to stetch through the year. Good luck with your budgeting! I have a feeling once you start it will actually feel really good to put money in savings every month!

Regina said...

we just started the GREAT CREDIT CARD payoff and let me tell you-it is hard. I can relate on trying to stick with it and push through--good luck and happy savings:-)

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