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Health & Fitness

Creating Your Family Budget

By John Focht

Creating your family budget is not an easy process to go through, but it should be considered as much of a priority as going food shopping, paying bills, or going to the doctor.

Setting a budget for your family will allow you the ability to understand exactly how much you can spend during a pay period; how much you have to pay out on bills, expenses, and other activities; and exactly how much you can save during each pay period (your end goal should be to save 10% of your paycheck, but we’ll save that for another day).

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While setting a family budget won’t exactly provide you financial freedom, it will provide you the ability to review your spending habits; estimate upcoming expenses; and better plan for cutbacks in the event of a major repair, or worse, a loss of income.

In order to get a family budget in place, you need to start with getting a grasp on your current spending habits Understanding how and where you are currently spending your hard-earned money will provide you with a better starting point in getting a family budget off the ground.

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Once you have your spending habits in check, you can now get a better sense on where you are overspending and can may some cutbacks, and where you might be able to allocate some of that overage spending to.  Don’t expect to make cutbacks overnight though.  Expect it to take a few months to adjust yourself, and your family, to the new lines of spending in the family.

To create a family budget, you need to first understand your family’s current spending habits.  Once you have that in place, you can get to work on setting up your family budget.

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