Walk with me through 2½ months of an average family budget. You will see the numbers. You will become familiar with the categories. You will come to understand the budgeting process. Best of all, you get to see how someone else does it!
Download the entire household budget now, print it off, and use it to take notes as we go along.
Have you ever seen someone else"s budget? Did your parents show you their"s when you were a teenager? What about your best friend? Has your accountant ever offered up his personal spending plan? No? I didn"t think so. Then how are you supposed to know what to do?
Plenty of other websites, magazines and books tell you to do it, and they even give you all the tools you could ever need. But did one ever give you their thought process as they worked through budgeting ten weeks of their life?
Now you can look into the intimate details of someone else"s income and expenses.
Starting on the next page we will look at the first week of a 10 week sample home budget.
Each page shows you a small calendar like the one at the top right of this page. The current payday is hilited in red with a dark border. That day represents the first day of the week. Each week in this budget begins on a Friday because that is payday. Each week is hilited in red. All other paydays are hilited in green.
Furthermore, the first bullet point under "The Bottom Line" will always refer you to the Free Budget Templates page. The link names change from page to page, but the actual link remains the same.