Simple and Easy Budgets

Update:

Our little family is surviving well this past week and looking forward to the next where Claire will be turning 10 months! Can't believe time is going so fast with her! She is learning at a breakneck speed how to get what she wants and uses the cutest facial expressions to show her feelings. If you ever over hear us calling her a little terrorist, know that it is with the most love and adoration we do so because we enjoy being terrorized by her. The way she can get into all the things we thought were unreachable is astonishing and I've had to learn very fast how to baby proof things. We try to contain the mayhem to the living room by creating walls, but she understands that we can go over them and often lets us know how unfair it is that she can't follow.

We had a lot of fun this weekend in the Pocatello run series! Chris was so great to help out by pushing the double stroller with the babies and running the 5K which gave my sisters-in-law and me the opportunity to run the 10K. I have been training with my Rexburg hill for the past two weeks but was not prepared for the Pocatello hills on the course! The last half mile was a brutal hill that got me the worst and I found myself needing a walking break half way up. Still made good time and finished just over an hour, but didn't win anything in the raffle...

Simple Budget

When I created my template, I had a few things I wanted to include that I didn't see many other people using, and I wanted it to be simple. I've included the template I use at the bottom if you want to get ideas, and to see what I'm talking about when describing it. I started by making separate incomes for Chris and I and included the other column because we had taxes come back and I didn't thin of it as just one of our incomes. My expenses are labeled with the major things and also leaves room for more in the future when we eventually start having more every month. Recently we've had more expenses I want in a row on it's own like passports, applications, traveling, etc because I can look back to see how much these things cost us.

My column includes a expected budget we want to keep and then what was actually spent, then I also included the difference column. Knowing the difference in what we spent and what we had planned to spend was something not many templates I saw did, but I wanted to see if we could pay attention to which thing we were over spending in. I mostly do my budgets the first few days of the month which means as soon as I finish the last months, I fill out our expected budget for the next month. I like getting an estimate of how much we might make and might spend to see if we need to be conservative on groceries or one of the other categories that are flexible.

 I use the notes section a lot and almost wish it was bigger the variable expenses like groceries, gas, fun, and other. I even have to spread to empty notes areas sometimes when doing the groceries line depending on how many times I had to shop. On an ideal month, I am only shopping once a week but there are also things I sometimes forget and have to make a short trip for since half of my brain is taken by Claire now. I've been using this template for over a year and not a lot has changed, the basic template is the same but some of the words are different in our expenses. I'm very satisfied with the way we do our budget now and hope some of my explanation can help others start budgeting because it can be easy! You can use this type of budget as a print out or a document on the computer so do what you want!

Monthly Budget    _________20___

Income	Budget	Actual	Diff	Notes
Lara
Chris
Other
Total
Expenses	Budget	Actual	Diff	Notes
Rent
Electric
Car ins.
Health
Dental
Phone
Tithing
Groceries
Gas
Fun
Savings
Other
Total
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