Sunday, September 24, 2017

October 1st

October 1st marks the beginning of our budget.  Rob and I have done this a few times before, and it has worked really well.

To create the budget we use google sheets.  Rob is really the one who sets all this up for us.  First, he organizes all our monthly bills that don't change.  After that, he puts in things that we buy that change from month to month, such as, groceries, drugstore items,  veterinarian care, and car maintenance. Then comes the third layer, the "wants".  We give ourselves money to spend each month on ourselves, the kids, the dog.  Ta-Da! You have a budget.

We've done this a few times, so with this budget we added in things like the car payment, but mostly things stayed the same. Rob even colored coded it this time!

I've included a copy of our categories below:

October 2017
House
Insurance
Utilities
Taxes
College
Car
Groceries
Gifts
T-Rex
Gas
Medical
Maintenance
Eat Out
Clothes
Kids
Misc
Costco
Drugstore
Andrea
Rob
Entertainment
Amazon/PayPal
Bills
Needs
Discretionary


Over the next week I'll go into some of the reasons why we decided to start budgeting again, some personal budget goals, and thoughts on minimalism/zero waste living.

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