How to Prepare a Family Budget Worksheet

The best way to tackle your home finances is to develop a family budget worksheet to track your family income versus expenses.

Things You'll Need

• Laptop or home personal
• computer
• HP desktop printer
• Financial Software program for money management
• budget calculator
• income, expenses

Instructions

1. If your family has a home PC, mac, or laptop, you may access for free or can download from the internet a budget management software such as Microsoft Money to help design your worksheet.

2. Design your budget worksheet around 6 main categories:
   1. Total Monthly family Income
   2. Monthly Home Budget Expenditures
   3. Monthly Auto Expenses
   4. Monthly Debt
   5. Monthly Family Living Expenses
   6. Total Monthly Household Income (free income after expenses)

3. Monthly living expenses include rent or mortgage owed, property and casualty payments, loan payments, utilities, taxes, and any family repairs.

4. Auto expenses should include automobile loans, gas, car insurance, and automobile maintenance for your family. These payments make up the next category on your budget worksheet.

5. Family debts should include any credit loans and monthly balances owed make up the next budget worksheet category.

6. Next list Miscellaneous budget expenses on your worksheet to include other personal costs such as:
   -childcare/school costs/sports activities
   -clothing, food
   -family entertainment, cable, videos, newspaper, magazines
   -medical, vet
   -clubs, association dues
   -investments, life insurance
   -family vacations, gifts for holidays
   -haircuts, nails, etc.

7. Figure your total family monthly income at top of your budget worksheet, then total your monthly expenses for each category, and subtract to get your net income balance at the bottom of your worksheet.

Tips & Warnings

• Always round up when estimating your monthly budget

• Get your household worksheet completed first and list as many as you can think of under miscellaneous before writing your own expenses in.

• Divide your printable budget sheets in 2 if paid bi-weekly or 4 if every week to help determine your monthly payment schedules

• Always include a category under miscellaneous expenses for emergencies and decide how much your family can free up each week to add to this fund

Resources

• Barbie Collectors
• Printable Budget Sheets
• Budget Sheets