Budgeting
Creating and keeping up with a budget doesn’t have to be hard. You can create a written budget with notebook paper. However, if you want some forms to work from, you can click the button below to download my worksheets from the video. If you are at the House still, ask the office staff for copies of the budget forms… I’ve left some there for you!
You can watch the video for a complete explanation of how to use my budgeting style. But if you want a few key points, here ya go:
Create a page with a list of all your bills in the order they are due. As you pay bills, come back to this page and record when you paid that bill, how you paid that bill, and how much you paid. You can even write down the check number you used or the confirmation number of your payment. This creates a record for you to go back to if a payment is ever in question.
For each paycheck you receive, write down how much you made and the days you get paid for. This helps you see what income you have and for what days you worked. If you happen to have a difference in pay due to being sick or overtime being canceled or any other changes to your work hours that week(s), you can know when these changes in hours will impact your paycheck.
For each paycheck, you should list out your flexible cost items … such as groceries, gas, cigarettes, etc. These are costs that you want to budget for, but the amount may be up to you. This means you can adjust these dollar amounts up or down depending on how much money you have to work with.
For each paycheck, you should list the bills you are going to pay with that paycheck. Add up all the bills that week to see how many expenses you have coming out.
Take your income, minus your flexible costs, minus your bills to pay. Whatever is left is extra money you can put on a bill or debt or put in savings. If this number falls into the negative, you’ll know how much you need to adjust your flexible costs or if bills need to move around.
