One statement of caution though: if you’ve never budgeted before, don’t take my sample budget and say “That sounds good! We’ll do that!” The only way to truly reduce your spending is by determining the true total amount of what you spent last month, and then trying to make substitutions to lower that amount. We have a budgeted amount that goes towards debt repayment based on my absolute lowest expected income and then we apply everything else we make towards that. I have a fairly irregular income where some months are fantastic and some months are… not so much. We already have our emergency savings account and a slush account established, so we don’t have a set amount going to savings monthly. Your budget may look different depending on where you are in your life. Everyone is at a different point in their financial journey you may be well past us, or you may be behind us.
This sample budget is based on our current household budget. Which is a shame, because seeing how other people spend their money is a huge help in deciding how to manage your own. This isn’t something that is discussed often, even amongst friends, so it’s really hard to see specifics of how others spend their money. A sample budget is a budget from another family that you can look over to help you create your own budget.
From the young couple that doesn’t have enough money to pay their electric bill, to the largest multi-million dollar company everyone needs a budget.
An absolute necessity to managing your money is a budget.