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Hello All!
How do you or your family manage your family finances? With my family it is a shared responsibility as I am the one who puts together the budgets while my Non-Hubby is the enforcer of the budget. He keeps me in line when ever I fall off the wagon so to speak.
I am very good with my budgeting skills and saving skills now a days. I count every cent, dollar, and penny my family and I have. I'm one of those penny pitching mama's you see walking around with coupons at the store. I've come a long way from how I was in my younger days. I will admit I am a recovered shopaholic who made VERY bad decisions when I was younger with my spending and had some major financial "mismanagement" to deal with after college.
I had a mess of credit card debt on top of student loans to deal with when I got out of college. And having a family at the same time is not an easy thing to handle on top of everything. I over extended myself and lived above my means and then had to figure out a way to pay for it all in the end. I was lucky to have found a way to get out by consolidating our or my credit card debt I should say which set me on a path to recovery from my shopaholic days.
Now a days I keep a strict budget for our family and I now have almost all of our aka my credit card debt paid off. I've gotten rid of debt by really sticking to two philosophies I've decided to follow...
1. STICK TO THE BUDGET! AND 2. DON'T BUY ANYTHING WITH OUT A COUPON OR THAT ISN'T ON SALE.
When creating our Monthly budget we tally up every bill that we have to pay for the month and everything we need like gas for the cars and pocket money, etc. I create a budget and mark down how much money we have to spend for the month as a starting balance and deduct all our bills and utilities and expenses. As the month goes on and we spend any money I fill in every cent we spend each week and check off everything we spend and keep deducting down the money spent so we know how much money we have in our account at all times. I also save all our receipts for the month as well.
We don't spend a lot of money on food or personal care items since I coupon and stock pile on items like food, toilet paper, etc. Couponing has cut my families budget in half.
Coupons have become a source of income for my family and I include how much coupon money we have in our budget. The money I save a month with coupons now goes to bills and other things like in our savings. So with the help of coupons we stick to our budget very well.
That's how my family and I budget and stick to it. How do you Budget for your family?
***Disclosure: This is a paid post from Turbotax and Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.***
