Ask:
How the heck do you set budget? ..I know it sounds dumb, but I am seriously having trouble. I want our family to set a budget and stick to it, but I don't want it to be so strict that it sets us up to fail. You know? Do you start cold turkey or ease into it by cutting down on things gradually? Do you budget EVERY penny or have a "fun fund"? What happens to the money if you come in at the end of the month under budget? Do you save it? Treat yourself with the extra $? Roll it over to the next month? Put it toward a big goal? What is the easiest way to keep track of spending when there is more than one person spending? Keep a notebook in your purse/car/desk and logg it all in at the end of the day? How much do you budget for food for a 5 person family? ( I usually just buy what I want so I am not sure what is the "norm" since it flucuates so much for us.) How do you explain to friends and family you new frugalness without coming accross as a b**** when it comes time to give gifts? How much do you alot for gift giving? Ahhhh....so many questions!
Any help or advice would be AWSOME. I want to start the new year of right...and frugal...and simple!!
Thanks...Kathy
Answer:
First of their is no dumb questions! What I would do first is save all your receipts and see where all your money goes and to know basically what you typically spend on groceries and everything else. There is some good ideas from other postings as to how to set up a budget. The way I do it is I subtract my mortgage, and "guesstimate" what our utilities will be (usually overestimate) and what we have left I figure gas for the vehicles, grocery money and try to put some aside for clothing, home and car. With our extra I am trying to save better (my hubby has holes in his pockets!) and pay extra towards bills and so on!
I try to cut cost throughout everything I can control (clothes, groceries and "fun" money etc.!). The best way for me to cut back on groceries is starting a stockpile of canned foods and then on (so far this month I only spent about $30, mainly on milk for a family of 4). Just try not to do everything at once! I think it is easy to start a stockpile by going to a place like Aldi's or finding good deals and coupons! As for Christmas, you can start shopping throughout the year and no one will notice a difference unless you tell them. Or you can make your own gifts. Simply tell them you don't really have the money to give so much this year and don't let it bother you! Hope that helps you some!
Answer:
Every one is so different that its hard to say what you should do. Start buy keeping track for an entire month . Then sit down and figure what all you fixed bill sare and round off how much you think utilities will be. As far as things like clothes and extras that is where most people get off the budget. IT will take several months to figue it out and dont beat yourself up when you go off budget. Just learn from it and adjust your budget the next month. Anything extra should be saved and used as needed. Youcan print out many free budget spread sheets on the net. It been several months and I still dont have it all figured out bu tat least I'm trying and that makes a big difference.
Answer:
Setting a budget.. this is what I did. figured our MAIN expenses (tithe, rent/mortgage, utilities, groceries, medical expenses, gas, etc.) and listed those. Then I wrote how much we were spending at that time. On another sheet, I wrote the same expenses and cut them down to a realistic but challenging amount. Shave a little here and there and you'll be surprised how much "extra" you have to work with. Then, we just dived in. It was harder at first, but got better (the cravings to just run out and grab BK twice a week were really strong! lol). It was a necessity, as we had just had a baby and went down to a 1 income household (me staying at home), so we didn't really have a choice. And we survived. The first few paychecks were a little rocky, I won't lie. But stick with it and you'll get the kinks ironed out (I had to shift some things a little a few times).
Most budgeting articles will tell you to be sure to pay yourself before you pay other things. They say it keeps you from getting bitter about being frugal. Our "fun money" is a netflix membership ($19 a month). We don't do other things - that is our fun. I would make sure all of your main necessities (rent/mortgage, utilities, cc bills, etc) are taken care of before paying yourself the fun money. It'll make sure you dont' get in trouble with your bills and give you the incentive to stay frugal (so you can actually have your fun money! lol).
So far, in two years, we've RARELY had extra money at the end of our paychecks (bi-weekly). Since I've been stockpiling with coupons/sales (started about a month ago), I've found we have like $20-30 left in our account at the end. Right now, it has to go for a bunch of different things, so it gets rolled over and used in the next pay period, but I'm working towards being able to sock away the extra I have leftover into a savings account. We already have Netflix, which is our fun, budgeted in each month, so we aren't desperate for any leftovers to be our "fun" money.
The easiest way for us to keep track of spending is to have online banking. I can see where each transaction was made, and know who made it (DH or me). DH and I were having a really hard time keeping track of receipts and we don't have the room to collect stuff like that when we can do the same thing online with the click of a button. Oh, and I can keep track of DH's spending that way too! Like a little crystal ball! lol I do think checking our expenses daily has helped me. At the end of the night, I quickly log in and see where we're at. I compare it to our bi-weekly budget, which I have made up in Excel. It does the figures for me, so I can plug in an added expense and it'll tell me what it does to my budget, etc. I tried doing everything on paper by hand and I went insane. Excel saved my sanity on this one, for sure.
I have NO clue how much to tell you to budget for feeding 5. I say try to cut your grocery budget by 10% every paycheck, seeing how far you get before you just can't do it anymore. You'll probably be surprised. Buy things ONLY on sale. Check out the threads about stockpiling - it does a WORLD of wonder (especially with 5 to feed!). My girlfriend has 5 kids and can walk away every week spending $300 on groceries! I'd say 90% of it is processed foods, which are definately more expensive. But if you want to buy them, only buy them when you have a coupon and they're on sale. I admit I like having frozen pizzas to throw in or boxed potatoes to whip up with a meal. You can either buy a box of Betty Crocker potatoes for $2.00 (EEK!) or a 5# bag of potatoes for the same price.. OR you can watch the sales and when those boxed potatoes go on sale for $1.50 and you have a coupon for $1 off, you can grab 10 boxes for just $0.50 each. With the sales/coupons, you'll get 10 for the price you'd normally pay for 2. And so on and so forth. But right now it's just the 3 of us, so I can't recommend anything to you on this one.
To your friends & family.. you tell them the truth. You need to cut back expenses, your income is going down, you want to start saving $, you're saving up towards ___________. If they don't like it, oh well. You're responsible for how well you steward your finances. When our friends wanted to go out and do something, DH told them the truth - we're at the end of our budget right now and we can't fit it in. Sorry, maybe another time. And then we invited them over to watch a movie or do something FREE. Suggest you do a grab bag (with $ limit) next year for Christmas (so you're buying 1 or a few gifts instead of a massive amount). Shop clearance for birthdays (after holidays is great for this). Personally, we don't give bday gifts to others. We budget out a little money here and there for a couple months before a birthday to get a gift for our nuclear family members (me, DH and DS). We get/make cards for birthdays. We've stopped apologizing for not having gifts to give - the "I'm sorry" gets old and life isn't about things. Plus it only makes us bitter about being frugal - apologizing for something that's directly due to our decision to fix our finances and be good stewards of them only makes us feel like it is something that we should be ashamed of or something. Don't be ashamed of your decision - stand by it! If you really want to give gifts to everyone on special occasions, take a gander through the money-saving Christmas gift idea threads and start making things early next year so you have both time and money without breaking your budget. (you could also do a christmas club at the bank, budgeting in $10/month to save for next xmas -- if you have the $ to do that).
Good luck diving in! Let everyone in your nuclear family know that this is what you are all going to do and WHY. Don't just tell the kids "no more Cheetos or ice cream" but tell them why they can't have it. Or buy it (sale/cpn) for a TREAT and make it super special! Make sure to work together and give grace - it'll be a bumpy road at first, but TOTALLY worth it for your family and finances!