Family Budget Worksheet

Using A Sample Budget Form

When money gets tight, it can be tempting to turn to credit cards and quick loans for the extra money you need. Unfortunately, quick fix solutions such as these often end up becoming high interest debts that are hard to get rid of.

Rather than looking for quick fixes for tough financial times, a better solution is creating a personal, household or business monthly budget. There are many sources you can go to for a free sample budget form, and any one will give you a good start toward creating a budget. Here are a few you can check out: budgetmap.com, mybudgetplanner.com, mvelopes.com.

Or, you can create your own, with these quick and simple instructions:

If you would prefer to make your own budget, your first step will be making a complete list of all your bills, along with how much you pay each month; these are called your monthly fixed expenses.

Then, make a list of other things you spend your money on, such as gas for your car, spending money for incidentals, grocery money, money put into college savings accounts, etc..

These are called your monthly variable expenses, and you'll have to estimate how much you spend each month on these things. To do this you can either save all of your receipts for a month, or go through your checking and credit accounts for a month and add up where you spent your money.

Once you have done this, create a two column worksheet, either on a sheet of paper, or on a computer program spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel. One column is for the name of the bill or expense, and the other is for the amount of that bill or expense.

Add up all of your bills and expenses, and then compare that number to how much income you bring in during the month. If that number is fairly low, and it probably is if you are trying out a budget to fix money problems, then you'll want to look at ways to cut expenses.

This can be done in a number of ways. Example: turning off cable television, to cutting down on money spent on coffee every morning. Consider what you can cut back on, and make a sample budget form.

Grab the calculator and run your numbers again, and see how your spending compares to your income with the cutbacks you feel you can make. You might be surprised at how much money you can save by cutting back on little things!

Creating a simple monthly budget can go a long way toward helping you spend your money more wisely each month.

If you have significant debt that you are working on getting out of as well, consider credit counseling or one of the many articles available online about smart ways to work on significant debt.