1. A New Beginning: Creating a Budget

I had attempted once before to create a money saving blog. This time, I am going to post one money saving idea every day, even things that we already do to save money.

1. Creating a budget
We got together today and set up our monthly budget. We started by writing down all of the regular household bills, then added in other expenses that we thought of while we were discussing the budget.

Here is the list of basic expenses:

• House payment / Rent
• Electric
• Gas
• Water
• Homeowner's / Renter's Insurance
• Trash
• TV
• Internet
• Phone
• Cell Phone
• Car Payment
• Car Insurance
• Car Operating Expense (Gas)
• Car Maintenance
• Car Registration
• Life Insurance
• Pet Expenses
• Food Expenses
• Education Expenses
• Current Debt
• Personal Care
• Medical / Dental
• Savings
• Entertainment

This is a general list, of course everyone's budget list will be a little different depending on your personal activities and what is important in your own life.

We then decided which items will be paid through the checking account and which items will be paid for with cash. Next, is to set up envelopes with the cash amounts for those items. (Hint: cash really limits you to your budgeted amount). We set up our budget in a computerized spreadsheet with added columns for actual expenses each month. This is the first step in creating Financial Sanity. Here are two sites that can help you get started on your own budget:
How to Make a Budget and 10 free household budget spreadsheets

 Until tomorrow.