Budgeting.

Budgeting is hard.  Growing up, it wasn't necessarily something I had to do.  My bills were all paid for and if I wanted something, I saved up for it using money from my job.  But I didn't have to budget.  And goodness, do I wish I had known how back then!  Life would be much simpler now.  Adulting is not fun.  Moving on...

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Last fall, I started a new job and my husband and I decided it was time to really start budgeting.  Before, we kind of just kept tabs on what our bank account looked like and if we got into trouble, we would dig into our savings. Not the best method for living, but we were a young married couple with no idea how to manage our income and expenses. So after about 2 months at my new job, I discovered a handy little tool on Microsoft Excel 2013. Excel has different kinds of budget spreadsheet templates! What?! I was so thankful to have found these because it has made a huge difference in how we manage our money.


This is what a typical month on our budget looks like. Now I know that some of the lines seem high. Who needs $150 allowance each month? Our family apparently. My husband is really good about only using a portion of his allowance, and saving the rest for later in the year for gifts and things. I'm a little more of a wild card and can guarantee that I always go over my allowance. That is why I added a separate line this month for food allowance. I am always grabbing lunch or breakfast at work, so rather than cracking into my fun money, this will help me to stay under budget. As for the other items, we typically go over on our Family/Date Night fund. Let's face it, grabbing dinner to go is much easier than cooking when you have two little ones. This is an area we need to work on as a family. As for the other lines, we rarely exceed. This is because we "over-budgeted" for everything. This may seem odd, but you really just never know what is going to happen. Our cell phone bill could be more one month than it was previously. I personally would rather be prepared with wiggle room than caught without it.


One line that is up for negotiation is the Debt Payoff line. The amount depends on how much extra income we have come in. Previously I wrote about getting extra money for mileage from our jobs. This is where that money would go, depending on what else we were looking at for the month. We set a reasonable amount to pay off extra, and just go for it!


I really hope you all will look into these budget spreadsheets on Excel. They are so handy and they give you a better idea of what you have coming in and going out each month. The one we use lets us compare our Actual Income vs. Projected Income. This tool alone makes a huge difference! Our projected is always less than our actual, which makes keeping our budget in check much easier. Take a look if you have Excel on your computer! 

--chloe.