Family Budgeting Template – Top Recommendations

Family budgeting is one of the foundations of managing personal finances and achieving financial well-being due to financial budget templates.

What is family budgeting for?

• Define the amount of funds that you cannot spend on your current life, but direct to achieve your goals and financial independence (financial freedom).
• Ensure living comfort so that funds does not leak, but is spent on something significant and necessary.
• Everyone knows that it needs to be planned, but few do it.

Why don’t people plan their family budget?

In the opinion of financial experts, there are two reasons:

1. the wrong attitude towards budgeting template;
2. the process of planning a family budget becomes more complicated.

In this test, we will give recommendations in order to get maximum benefit for personal finances with a minimum investment of time.

Recommendation #1. Start to properly treat the family budget

For many, competent personal budget template is associated with the need to save a lot, to deprive themselves of the pleasures of life. This is a great mistake.

In fact, the quality of life should improve. How is this happening?

The fact is that most people spend at least 20% of their money thoughtlessly, in vain. For example, the abuse of energy drinks, frequent meals in cafes, overpayments for goods and services that could be cheaper (clothes, mobile communications, etc.), impulsive purchases. Refusing them will not in any way reduce the comfort of life.

But with what pleasure you will be able to redirect part of the saved money to something really important for you: personal care, leisure, hobbies, gifts to family and friends.

From the left part of the money, we would recommend creating personal capital and starting the path to financial independence and financial freedom.

As you can see, this is not about total cost cuts, but about prioritization. This family budgeting will improve the quality of life without the need to earn more.

Recommendation №2: Do not overload the family budget with insignificant stuff

There are templates that calculate expenses in monetary terms.

Such detailing does not bring any benefits, but require to spend a lot of time and effort. As a result, it gets boring.

Therefore, set up an application on your phone about keeping a budget, which indicates the main options for income and expenses: groceries, visiting cafes, communication costs, transportation, shopping, etc.

Let’s be honest, planning your personal budget is not the most interesting thing in life. You need to deserve it exactly as much time as necessary. Therefore, a minimum of effort is a maximum of results.

Recommendation #3: Pay yourself first, then everyone else

A person is paid a salary, makes expenses, and saves only the funds that remains at the end of the month. But there will always be very “significant” and “urgent” demands, which will spend the remaining funds. This is the wrong approach.

It is much easier to postpone the amount that you planned to use to create personal capital immediately after receiving your salary, and spend the remaining money calmly. We are moving towards the goal, we create planned savings, therefore we spend money with comfort and peace of mind.

Recommendation #4: Calculate how much an hour of your life costs

Some people are embarrassed to ask for a discount or are resentful by the high cost of products. In fact, the rich are not afraid of the evaluations of others. They know the value of money.

How much is one hour of your life worth? Let’s assess that your paycheck is $6,000 with a standard work schedule of 180 hours per month. It turns out that one hour of your life costs $333.

If 20% of your income is wasting away, then 35 hours of your life, or almost one work week, is spent on nothing.

Recommendation #5: Don’t try to save a lot on little things. Cut big expenses back

For example, for the sake of economy, a human uses a bus, not a car, even if he is experiencing discomfort and negative emotions. Then he may overpay an extra dollars in a restaurant. He doesn’t feel a real money decrease, but the non-positive experience remains.

Therefore, do not try to save too much on small things. Analyze the largest items of your expenses and reduce them without losing comfort for life. The Pareto’s law implies: 20% of the efforts give 80% of the result and vice versa.

Keeping a family budget is not undertaking!

If you follow the above recommendations, cost control will become your habit, and will be taken for granted.

Moreover, family budget planning can guarantee a comfortable life and financial living. All you need is to arrange its planning in an efficient way and enjoy the positive outcomes. This is how money becomes an ally and begins to work for a person.