I need to start a family budget. How much (percentage) of your income goes towards each part of your budget, (ex: utilities, groceries, gas, savings, etc.)? I know a lot of you say that you use quicken and such but I am not sure how much to set aside for each of these let alone how to enter them into a spreadsheet for it. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Do you have access to Excel? If so I can help you set one up.

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Happy Haunting!
"A friend is someone who sees through you and still enjoys the view." -Wilma Askinas

Do you have old statements? I would keep track of your usage for things over a period of time and take an average. We spend a lot more on electricity over the summer than winter, so we usually take an average for summer and then again for winter when we plan our budget. I fill up 2x a month on gas, so that is how I account for usage. I have read other moms on here who can feed families of 5 for $200 a month, but I have not managed that yet. I would keep old receipts and track your use of everything and write it down. I always ask for receipts. Hope this helps.

I think first you need to look at the constants that don't change for example my morgage payment is $1100 a month that is 36% of our income. The phone internet bill, Student loan payment, car insurance, car payment are all bills that don't fluctuate. After that you look at the ones that do typically the utillity bill and figure out on average what it is. Or you can even get on a plan to pay the same amount everymonth based on past usage. The other exspences are the ones that fluctuate. We set up ideals to figure these out. Ideally we spend under $500 for groceries and food, Ideally we only fill up the tank 6 times in a month. Honestly, using money management software is the way to go because it takes your data and gives it back to you on charts where it is easy to target the problem areas.

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Kimberly Proud Mommy to Bethany Rose April 2006

The way I set my up was taking the my receipts and dividing by the number of months I used. Like lets say I had Feb. $28.66, March $39.88, April $19.99 and May $44.99 add together all the months it would equal $133.52 then divide by 4 months your aveage would be $33.38 and that is what I would budget for. Then as the months go on I would check to see if it changed.

This may not work for everyong but it is a start.

we use excel too.

dh's check is autodeposited into our "household bills" account. I setup a bank autotransfer every paycheck for some to go in savings and some to go to our debit card account (food, gas, discretionary spending stuff). these amounts should never change.

the remainder or my "household bills" categories are:

mortgage
utilities
car payment
insurance
our school loans
kids tuition

by having only that fixed amt in our debit account, I can gauge whether to make spaghetti every night until the next paycheck or whether to go to Target or not

Here is a copy of our budget sheet in excell. It only includes take-home pay...so anything that comes out for retirement, flex, taxes, healthcare etc I don't include..because it is auto. taken out. Thisis an old budget sheet but can give you some ideas. On page 2 is a sheet you can print out to track your expenses. Hope this helps.

Just a word of caution. I'm an accountant and have worked with many people on their budgets. Some people spend so much time tracking the details of every purchase (including those constants) that they loose sight of the goal. Tracking costs can be just as bad as not tracking. It can sometimes give you an excuse for buying something you really did not need, like if one month your DH sees you had $300 budgeted for groceries and you only spent $200, so he goes out and buys $100 worth of beer. You still need to be a smart shopper and have good purchasing discipline.

Sorry - don't want to sound like your mom, and since you are on this web site, you probably already ARE a smart shopper.