Most months we don’t even spend this much on the electric bill. RELATED ARTICLE: How to Save Money on Groceries RELATED ARTICLE: Meal Planning for Beginners To keep our grocery budget low, I meal plan and use my favorite grocery saving tips. But I have 3 growing kiddos and keeping our grocery budget that low doesn’t always happen. My goal is actually to keep this below $500 a month, even down to $400. These expenses are important to track as they can be budget busters. These are the expenses where the amount we pay each month changes. Now we move onto the variable expenses section of the sample budget. We have a charity that we donate to every month. But in the fall it will increase as she will be going 5 days a week. And this expense will go away for the summer. My daughter is currently in preschool just 2 days a week. This is for our city garbage can and recycling can. Some of our are fixed expenses, some are variable. If your utility bill varies each month, then it should go in the variable expenses section of your budget. This may not be an option for everyone, or you may not want to do it this way. This helps us to better plan our budget and project our expenses months in advance. We have opted to have some of our utilities paid on the “budget” plan so that our bill is the same every month of the year. Utilities CAN be either fixed or variable expenses. Please note here: Natural gas does fall into the utility category. We don’t have a choice about this since we are renting. Most of our appliances, including our hot water heater and furnace use natural gas. This insurance bill includes the monthly premium for both of our cars, a life insurance policy for each of us and our renters insurance. I would like to find a way to get this down. We have a limited data plan and rarely go over it. This is for mine and my husband’s cell phones. It is pretty basic but it allows us to stream videos on a few devices and do our usual online work, etc. We don’t have really fancy internet service. And for the house we have and the average rental rate, we got a really good deal. Below are the fixed expenses for this sample budget. They do not vary or fluctuate–you always know what they are going to be. These are the expenses that are the same month after month. Whenever you start working on your budget, you want to start with your fixed expenses. Sample of Family Household Fixed Expenses Use what you learn to start making decisions for YOUR money. Different parts of the country will have differing expenses for the same category. I want you to get a sense for how a budget works, not focus on the specific dollar amounts. But remember, everyone is on their own financial journey. In this sample budget I am going to show you where our money goes each and every month. I will also explain a few details along the way that will allow you to see where we are in our financial journey, and where we are headed. In this post I am going to show you our real budget numbers–our true, real life family budget example. I want to invite you to look over my shoulder, so to speak, and see an example of how we do our monthly family budget. Well, it can be super helpful to look over someone’s shoulder to see how they do their budget, so that you can get ideas for how to start your own. And having a budget is a MUST for achieving financial goals and, ultimately, financial freedom.īut what if you don’t really know where to start with creating a budget? Where do you even begin? Mostly because it is a true reflection of your financial life and where your focus is. When you are starting on your budgeting and financial freedom journey, it can be hard to know where to start.Ĭreating a budget is a very personal process.
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