Simple Budgeting For Housewives

Creating a family budget will help you save money and make family life a little more relaxed. A budget will help you plan and give you the vision that you can achieve your financial goals. This in itself will motivate you to reduce your expenses.

Evaluate Your Spending

Find the time to sit down and prepare your budget to work on a future financial plan. Do it with your partner so that you both are responsible.

Sort your expenses into categories such as shopping, entertainment, utilities, etc.

• If you keep receipts of all purchases, go back through your receipts and write down how you spent your money.
• If you typically use your debit/credit card for your purchases, go through your statement to find the volume of your purchases and identify your spending habits.
• Keep track of every purchase for the next 30 days so you can accurately work out your spending habits.
• Brainstorm what you regularly spend your money on.

Compare your Purchase volume and Total Family Income

Now you need to compare your expenses against the family income.

1. Add up the totals of each expense category
2. Create a total sum of your expenses
3. Then subtract it from your monthly family income

If you are spending more than the total income, you are in deficit and you definitely need budgeting.

Set your Financial Goals

Create some realistic financial goals, this will give you something to work towards and help you stick to your budget. These Goals might be:

• Pay off the credit cards
• Pay off the mortgage
• Kids’ education
• Family holiday
• New car
• New home

Create Your Family Budget

Based on your expenses, income and finance goals create a budget that will help you identify which spending habits need to be revised to help you pay your bills on time and achieve your goal.

• Set aside some uninterrupted time to start your budget.
• Be realisttic with the figures when budgeting.
• Keep all your bills, rent receipts/mortgage statements and payslips on hand so you can easily add in these details.
• When starting to budget, it’s a good idea to keep receipts for everything. This is so you can get a really good idea of the actual money you are spending.
• For little items paid for with cash where a receipt is not received, keep a notebook and pen in your handbag to keep track of these expenditures.
• When the actual amounts have been put into the budget, don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s now time to look at where you are overspending and work on these areas.

Consider adding the following to your budget so you aren’t having to dip into your savings:

• Incorporate contingency expenses into your budget for unexpected medical or car costs.
• Household items that may need replacing such as washing machines, fridge, etc.
• Purchases for birthday and Eid/Christmas gifts and entertainment
• Expenses for upcoming holiday

Sit down each month and review your expenses against the allocated budget. This will help you identify areas in which you may still be spending too much and where you may need to adjust your budget. that is to say. You have planned $100 a week for groceries, but realistically, this is not possible. So increase it and consider saving money in another area (less dinner or coffee to go, etc.).