Household Budget Management

Gabriella Romano October 1, 2020 Family Budget

A budget needs to estimate your average (yearly) income. Spending, which will be relatively constant, needs to be maintained below that amount. A budget should allow for error and so keeping expenses 5% or 10% below the estimated income is a conservative approach. When done correctly, your budget should end any given year with about 5% of their income left over. Of course being conservative and having more than 5% is never a bad idea.

Starting a family can be one of the most emotionally and fiscally draining expeditions that most individuals will take. Emotionally, people must deal with the psychological effects of raising children including lost sleep as well as other emotional drains involved with nurturing kids. Financially, however, a whole slew of unexpected expenses will come with the birth of a newborn child.

Be open and honest about the family`s financial dilemma and discuss your expectations, goals and visions for the near and distant future. If your children are old enough to understand the concept of money, they can be of great constructive help and will also learn from this exercise. When each family member is involved in the budget project - particularly teens, it saves a great deal of energy when having to make excuses to them of why they ca not buy this or have that. Informing them of what is going on will help to avoid future arguments and any counterproductive actions on their part that could end up making the situation worse.

First, you must balance your checkbook. You can either use software, or pen and paper to accomplish this task. Now, if the concept of balancing a checkbook eludes you, just search the internet on how to balance your checkbook. And, as you balance your checkbook, you should pay particular attention to missed transactions, bad math, or any unexpected transactions. I remember that on one occasion I had recorded an unexpected deposit as a withdraw in my checkbook register. So, to my chagrin, my $150.00 deposit became on paper, a $300.00 withdraw.