So let me start with I am currently using The Budget Mom’s Budget Workbook, its very pretty and I like it a lot. Im currently working on my own printable to share and also they will be different because I have different items and priorities then most.
The picture is my month layout where I can see when bills are do and when income is coming in. Currently my husband is being paid by weekly, I write out each bill that will need to be paid and I highlight them to correspond with the paycheck they will be paid with. The once we receive a paycheck I break the budget down even more just for the items being paid by the paycheck.
January hasn’t been too easy for budgeting, we are now playing catch up from Christmas, I suggest having a sinking fund for Christmas and to start that now that Christmas is over but clearly we don’t have much wiggle room right now. We had a sinking fund we started last spring but with a job loss that was used. Going into Christmas without savings or a plan has us stretching even further. Another added expense is our family van needs brakes and rotors, to save money we are buying those parts and doing the work instead of taking it to a garage and paying double. Other things that changed are I moved our car insurance due date to later in the month, we changed cellular companies so that due date is different, we no longer pay for Netflix because its included with our phones and our gas bill is $0 due to over payment with our budget billing.
First Paycheck I took out $370 to hold to pay the mortgage, I usually do $570 which is half of the mortgage per paycheck but we didn’t have enough and also I knew we have $230 in a reimbursement checking coming before the end of the month. To break down the bills for the first paycheck I write out all bills and subtract them from the income. The leftover I then take my cash spending out which currently are only gas and groceries. There was $56 leftover and I would usually put that into savings because our big goal right now is to build a $3000 emergency fund, but honestly in our human ways we used it for other frivolous things ( see I’m better with money but still bad at it)
Second paycheck is was done basically the same way. The income seems way higher because I included the reimbursement check and also the money I had saved for the mortgage. Now I did budget $150 for groceries to cover the next 2 weeks but I have only spent $64 and I need another $14 in non food items that we include in our grocery budget anything that is left is going towards our brakes and rotors. Something else that was added is an emergency fund line we put going to put $10 every paycheck into savings plus anything left over that way no matter what we are paying ourselves first and working towards our goal. I hope that anyone that sees this sees that even when there’s barely enough to scrape by progress towards goals will be made.
Stay tuned to see how I’m feeding my family of 6 for $64 for the next 2 weeks!
That Frugal Mom 