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Reducing Debt by Sticking to the Family Budget

There are a Few Basic Steps to Budgeting

How do you make and stick to a household family budget? What is a family
budget and why do you need one? "Because Debt Happens." - and it can
happen fast.

1. Get Organized & be Prepared

First things first. Before you set out to write out your incoming and outgoing funds, you need to spend some time getting organized and locating some financial records. You'll need to have the following available for reference (if applicable):

• Paycheck stubs (or copies of automatic deposits)
• Copies of your regular monthly bills
• Yearly tax returns
• Records of misc. income (bonuses, etc)
• Checkbook (or register)
• Misc. monthly receipts (haircuts, gifts, etc)

2. Time to Write it All Down

To see what you're spending, you have to keep track of what your family spends on a regular, monthly basis. This is usually your "constants" - the monthly bills and mortgage or loan payments that go out every single month. This is easily accomplished by using our free, helpful Budget Worksheet.

Don't be concerned if you end up needing to go back and add in expenses or items that you forgot. Until you get a handle on your morgage budget, that will happen. It helps to budget in a "little extra" to cover these little descrepencies.

What about expenses that are NOT monthly?

There will be things that "come up" irregulary like birthday gifts, haircuts, car registrations and things of that morgage nature. It will take a little bit of a different strategy to make sure you have enough Best Morgage Rates money available to cover these items. You need to plan ahead, if possible. For a car registration, that's easy - it's the same Bankruptcy Chapter 7 amount, every year, at about the same time. If you know it's going to be due in, say, 6 months, then allocate your bankruptcy income so that you will have that much saved up by the time your registration is due (car registration amount divided by 6 = monthly "short term savings"). Once you have made this bankruptcy payment, you will be able to allocate this "short term savings" to another expense category of your budget.