As gas goes up....

my spending has become more frugal...of course we are getting ready to revamp our whole downstairs as well...so I have to become even more frugal.

I haven't always been great with money - saving and all that...then I saw an Ultrasound that had 2 babies on it...something like that wakes you up fast.

Last year my goal was to really set a GOOD budget for my family - to insure we had some money to pay the bills...some money to save away...and some money to have fun with.

A friend of mine passed along a great budget worksheet a few years ago and I haphazardly used it - then about a year ago I got strict and really sat down to figure out just where our money was going...and why we never seemed to "get ahead" when it came time to pay our credit card bills...don't get me wrong we were doing well when it came time to pay our credit card and we could pay the amount due but there would still be a few hundred $$ on it from charging for the current month...

My goal was that at then end of the month ALL bills would be paid - including the credit card in full...so that means if I pay the credit card on the 20th of each month then I have 0 balance on the 21st...

I found out a few things...like I figured our grocery bills were about $350...but they were closer to $400...that I wasn't factoring in the one night a week pizza/Chinese food/Mcdonalds - which was adding up to about $60 a month....the girls had started school and while the daycare bill was lower I was handing out $10 for this and $5 for that during the month for things for school...another $50 or so I hadn't accounted for...never mind a qucik trip or two to Target at about $30 a pop...so what i found was that over the course of a month I wasn't accounting for about $400 ... a nice chunk of change.

So I sat down and did out a budget...factoring in when certain bills fell and what months we might have "extra" breathing room in our budget...

Within 5 months we were credit card debt free...meaning at the end of the month all bills were paid up in FULL...nothing hanging over our heads for the next month... and better yet watching what we spent has in turn made us more frugal and we have actually managed to boost our savings quite a bit in the past 6 months...

So I am passing along the budget worksheet for you to use - it is totally customizable - put in your own numbers (oh how I wish that was our monthly income) and your own catagories...I try to account for everything during the month...but I don't plan out every little $ to a catagory because we all know things come up during a month and the flexabiliy allows me to add categories and budget items when needed (see the Goodyear bill category...)

Hope you find it useful - click on the link and choose download file...BTW it is an excel file so you will need excel to open it...It is safe :)

SIMPLE BUDGET WORKSHEET