I’ve known about budgeting for quite awhile, and yet for the past few years I’ve been working, never really implemented a budgeting plan for the family. But at the beginning of this month, we started keeping track of all our expenses, personal and family, to see where all the money was going. I just created a simple Excel spreadsheet with a main form that gave a general overview of income and total expenditures for each month, as well as other worksheets for details of spending in each individual month.
It’s quite interesting to see that we’re way overbudget on dinner and others (including entertainment) and under budget on certain items like gas and medicine (good thing 
). Whereas before this budget came into play we had no clue where all the cash was going (we even thought we didn’t spend much on dining out … well there goes that theory), now everything becomes more clear.
I really find out a lot about my spending habits (including newfound addicting habits like coffee), as well as my wife’s and as a family. I would really recommend having a budget in place, even though it’s quite painstaking at first to keep track of all the receipts and bills; in the end, it’s quite worth it as you’d be able to determine where to cut back, and where you’re progressing. It’ll help plan and keep finances in track.
Technorati tags: Budget, Budgeting.
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