TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Family Budgets: A Brief Introduction 3
Why an e-book or how-to guide on setting up a family budget?
Why would or do you need a family budget?
The business case for and rationale behind family budgeting
Benefits and advantages of a family budget
Family Budgets Defined 12
What is a family budget?
What constitutes a good family budget?
What should it contain and look like?
The Family Budget Process 19
How to set up a family budget?
Some practical suggestions and a step-by-step summary of a family budget process
Hints, tips, tricks and tools for setting up a family budget
How should a family budget be used?
Final Thoughts On Setting Up A Family Budget 53
"Modern man drives a mortgaged car over a bond-financed highway on credit-card gas."
Earl Wilson
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INTRODUCTION
"The average family exists only on paper and its average budget is a fiction, invented by
statisticians for the convenience of statisticians."
Sylvia Porter
Unlike the quote provided above, seemingly reflective of general opinion on family budgets
today, we will attempt to take a much more positive approach to budgeting, as a family
oriented, user-friendly, financial management and planning tool and life-enabler.
However, when reflecting on family budgeting and inquiring as to why not more families are
actually using it, it becomes self-evident that similar skepticism runs rampant and deep in reality
and society, even globally so.
Once you start probing family budgets, expending time and energy researching the subject indepth,
it becomes quite clear, that most families are caught in a vicious, almost never-ending
cycle of “What comes in must go out.”
Most families might feel that budgeting is a futile effort, unnecessarily burdening them with
thoughts and ways, to go broke methodically and slowly, without the creature comforts and
indulgences of our human modern-day society.
Others might voice that they feel as if they are merely throwing money away, in a never-ending
and dizzying spiral of spend, spend, spend. People are getting deeper and deeper into debt, no
matter how hard they try to get out of it. Questions are then raised : How do we stop these
courses of action? How do we change the thinking around family fiscal discipline?
Put simply, in “How to set up a Family Budget”, we focus in on how to empower families to set
up better, more realistic budgets, stick to them and celebrate their successes (and learn from their
failures!)
Families eventually do have a monthly surplus, see their savings start to grow, consolidate their
debt, set aside discretionary funds and personal allowances, build their wealth and become more
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aware of their pro-active involvement and responsibility regarding their lives and finances. This
is when excitement builds and fundamental thought patters as well as spending attitudes are
changed.
Budgeting is seen as an accurate measurement of success when significant behavioral
transformation is taking place on the landscape of the family budget, spending habits and
financial patterns we observe over time!
Do you ever feel that you do not have enough cash at the end of the month to pay bills, buy
necessities of life? Are you barely making a dent in your credit card debt balance, no matter how
hard you try?
Here is a reality check for all of us: if we choose to spend it, it is gone for good. We cannot
spend it on anything else. Are you perhaps worried about a nest egg for your golden years or
savings for early retirement? Then you have arrived at a source that can provide some prudent
tips on how to start, finish, implement, stick to, revise and refine a family budget.
The family budget is a dynamic process, even more so than a mere static work-product, result,
process-outcome or document. It will, can and should change over time. It becomes a barometer
of a family’s fiscal circumstance, resources and health.
Maybe budgeting is not as much about reflecting on what you cannot have, but more about
thoughts on how to stretch, invest and spend your earned dollars more wisely. In short, it is about
making your money going further.
This quick-reference how-to guide was developed to assist you with setting up your own
personal, household and family budget, to help you with all of the above and more!
A couple of general money-savings will also be provided in these pages. There are also thoughts
and spending patterns that need to change, in order to become fiscally more disciplined and
many techniques, attitudes, habitual behaviors that we need to un-earth, evaluate and possibly
change, before you even start budgeting.
