How to Create a Family-Friendly Budget

There are many keys to successfully saving money – most of which start with determining your family-friendly budget. It can be a daunting task to start calculating your budget and limiting your spending but in the end the success of being able to accumulate a lifetime of savings and have a secure amount in savings is well worth it.

Determine Expenses & Income

When creating your family’s budget you need to calculate all expenses and income. You need to know the exact amount of money earned and spent. If you do not track your incoming funds and your spending amounts, it will be difficult to create your budget. Your spending amount should never exceed your incoming funds (payroll and any other finances you may earn and receive). First put together your expected expenses, these would be any of your regular bills (cable, phone, internet, utilities, credit cards, etc) as well as regular spending this will include anything that could be categorized as “cost for living” – such as food and rent/housing costs – and finally put together your extra-curricular spending (this is the money you spend on unnecessary things; anything you can live without). You can use this family budget planner to list out these expenses and income to help plan for your family’s budget.

Adjust your spending

When it comes to creating your family-friendly budget you may need to start thinking of expenses that you can part with. This is the most difficult part of building your family budget plan as it involves changing your lifestyle and sacrificing spending that you might find hard to give up but as mentioned before the savings you will accumulate will be much more valuable. Everyone in the family should be involved with evaluating and prioritizing expenses: work as a family to determine what expenses are needed and those that are expendable. Once you can adjust your spending to allow you to save an adequate amount of your grossing funds you’ll start seeing the benefits of your budget in your increasing savings fund!

Ways to limit your spending

There are a lot of ways you can cut back and limit your spending to allow you to maximize your savings and your family budget. Here’s a compiled list of unnecessary spending that you should try and avoid.

• Eating Out (including fast food, dinners, morning coffees) – You will be surprised by the amount of money you can save by avoiding fast food, restaurant dining, and even your daily cup of coffee!
• Shopping – Resist buying any impulsive purchases and avoid shopping out of boredom. The average shopper will spend money on unnecessary items to pass the time and get out of the house
• Research Free Events & Activities – Insteading of spending buying going to paid ticketed events considering researching your surrounding community for free events. There are usually a ton of free events that are just poorly advertized; take advantage of this by subscribing for free events on websites like EventBrite and MeetUp
• Going to the Movies – With the average cost of one movie ticket at $10+ now more than ever it’s time to avoid the cinemas and choose less expensive ways to watch feature films. You can choose alternative options like RedBox for $1/night/rental, which also help you save on cinema food spending.

Finalize your budget & invest in a Savings Account

Finally, with this information what better way to invest your well-earned and budgeted money than to invest it within a savings account? Savings accounts allow you to earn even more by giving you interest on your savings account balance as an incentive to withdraw less and save more! At Members Plus you can learn more about our savings account or stop by any of our branch locations and open an account! Download our Family Budget Planner to help you better manage your family finances as well.