So you’re ready to do some family budgeting? The best place to start is here, with our Family Budgeting for Beginners. You’ll see that the first thing you need when creating a family budget is a good dose of honesty about exactly where you’re spending your money. The Spending Diary exercise is invaluable for helping you to get a clear idea of where your money goes each month.
Once you have the honesty bit in place, what you need is a plan – which is where we come in. We’ve created a series of heads and subheads to help you write down all the expenses in your life. These should cover most of the areas of your spending, but feel free to add in your own. Add up each section into a sub-total and then a grand total at the end. Once you’ve got that, subtract your expenses from your income and, voila, the magic figure that will tell you whether or not you’re living beyond your means (hint, if you get a negative, you are living beyond your means – see Family Budgeting for tips on making cuts to your spending.
