Making a household budget.

[Dinner]

I'm sorry to admit it but I have almost managed to live three decades without ever creating a household budget beyond rough estimates in my head. One of my New Year's resolutions is to better manage my money so I am now going to make a househould budget. What sort of catagories do people include beyond the obvious house payment X amount, car payment Y amount? I'd like to make it as detailed as possible in order to be as accurate as possible.

Based upon my budget I'll be making decisions about where to cut unnecissary expenses and figure out areas where I should be spending more. First I need a good template in order to build my budget. Any suggestions?

[SlowwHand]

To keep this short:

First thing, pay yourself. Put a minimum of 5% into savings.
Decide how much you'll spend on housing. 1/4 - 1/3 of your net.
Estimate your utilities, unless you know them.
These are essentials before food, then transportation.

Rest up to you.

[Jon Miller]

I don't beleive in savings (at least not currently)

[Spiffor]

Re: Making a household budget.

Originally posted by Oerdin
areas where I should be spending more.

There is no such thing

[Dinner]

Well, increase payments on certain bills over others is what I meant.

[SlowwHand]

http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/personal-budget-spreadsheet.html

If you have home, or even automobile, make a 2nd payment noting that it's to be applied against principle.
Still would lean to it going into savings. One of those decisions you'll have to make.

and DO save.

[Dinner]

Currently I'm spending every cent. I'd like to change that thus the New Year's resolution.

[Dinner]

Well, I'm downloading the free 90 day trial version of MS Money. Here's hoping I can figure it out without documentation.

If I like it then I'll buy the full version and set up automatic billpay so that I don't have to bother with checks any more.

[Maniac]

Food, clothes and going out are a couple of categories in my 'household' budget.

[reds4ever]

The average household outgoings are probably around 10 different bills. Why would you need a spreadsheet to add up 10 figures?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by reds4ever
The average household outgoings are probably around 10 different bills. Why would you need a spreadsheet to add up 10 figures?

ten seems low to me but if i used a spreadsheet it wiouldn't be for the adding feature -- it would be for the recordkeeping-- Just writing stuff down and keeping a record has a purpose

[Flubber]

Broad categories

Car-- payment, insurance, gas/oil, maintenance
House-- payment/rent, insurance, heat, electric, Tv, phone, water,

Food
Clothes
Entertainment
Any other regular expense
Miscellaneous

[Kidlicious]

Budgets should help you make better decisions about your spending, but keeping one has never helped me make a better decision. I kept one for about 6 months once, but I didn't seem to need it, so I stopped.

[reds4ever]

Flubber,

How would recording it help? It is what it is.

Reds

[Dinner]

OK, I downloaded MS Money then had it download the info from my checking account, savings account, IRA, and credit card account. It automatically showed me what I'm spending my money on, what I'm not spending my money on, and where I should be spending my money.

I compared all of my previous payments over the last three months and by comparing it to my past spending I noticed that I'm spending way to much on the wrong things. In the last month I've spent $487 on "groceries" (which mostly means booze), an additional $208 on "entertainment" (meaning trips to the pub and two movies tickets), and almost $450 on dinning out. I need to drink less or find cheaper beer.

It looks like I will be packing a lunch each day from now on and I'm going to confine boozing to one night per week along with 2 nights per month of going downtown. I could easily save $600 per month doing that. After I looked at my past spending patterns MS Money helped me design a budget which looks realistic to me. The problem is after adding in things like saving (I put 5% of gross income since I couldn't swing 10% even after cutting corners), creating an emergency fund, and making full IRA payments I found I was around $380 per month below what I need to be making.

I thought I was sitting fairly well or at least average but Money seems to think I need to majorly cut spending and increase income. I should get a decent raise at the end of March but now I'm thinking about getting a part time job for the weekends. The other option would be to get a live in girlfriend to help cut expenses with.