Making a budget

I hope everyone's weekend was great, I love weekends and getting to spend time with my family and worship on Sunday.

As I mentioned last week, I want to discuss finances. When Mike and I were first married, we were not very good at making and keeping a budget. We would go to the store and decide there what things would be nice to have in the kitchen for meals but we never really made a plan and spent A LOT more than we needed to and sometimes even had.  It wasn't until we were living on one very meager income to pay the bills and what little tips I received each day to buy food. We were very poor and did what we could. I even traded haircuts and color services for beef because we couldn't afford meat! We did what we had to to get by. This was in our college years and we came away with a lot of debt but a good salary job and a need to learn to budget!

My husband is very technology minded, being a programmer everything is done on a computer, he prefers that. I, on the other hand, like to see things on paper and be able to work things out with pencil and paper. So we have created ourselves a great budget in an excel spreadsheet. This works great because it does all the thinking for you after you put in the initial formula. Plus you can then print off a copy for yourself.

Now I am by no means an accountant or even have much knowledge about finances, this is just what has worked for us. But I do want you to try to live on a budget, because how are you going to be prepared for a disaster or anything if you are running out of money each month? You can't. I have lots of different ideas of how to save money and stretch your paycheck, but that's a whole different post. So I will start today with having you think about your paycheck. For us this was pretty easy, we get paid once a month and we are on salary, so every paycheck is the same. Most people do not have that luxury, so think about your check or checks and try to get an average each month of your income.

Now hopefully you have a good idea of what you have to spend each month. Now start making a list of all the expenses you have each month, starting with the ones that are necessities, meaning you have to pay them or they will be shut off. Here is a list of what I came up with:

tithes and offerings
Rent/mortgage
Health insurance
Water/sewer
Electricity
Gas
Car insurance
Home owners/renters insurance
Car payment
Phone
Food/non food essentials

Make your list and tomorrow we will continue on our budget and show you how we plug everything in and make a budget work for you. Until then....