Continuing the topic of saving the family budget, we will consider the rules for maintaining a family budget. Nowadays, there are many different programs that have been created to account for family funds.
If you finally and irrevocably decided to track the “path” of your funds every month, then at first it will not hurt you to remember a few simple rules.
First, it is not at all necessary to take into account literally all of your family’s expenses and income. Planning is not as easy as you think, it is a serious step, it takes a lot of hassle and time. You need to constantly save all receipts, make endless notes in a special notebook, or enter data into a special program, which was mentioned above. Sooner or later, you may get bored with all this, and you may drop everything halfway, and this is how you get to real family budgeting. In such cases, one cannot rely much on the program either. Although it has a number of advantages over “handwritten calculations”, the most important thing is that it will not be able to remember all the expenses for you. Try to plan costs gradually, then you will not overload your brain too much.
Second, try to understand why you need this accounting. Family planning should have a clear purpose. Perhaps you want to save money to buy new furniture, appliances, vacations, or something else. Try to make a list of questions that you will receive an answer to at the end of your “revision”.
Many people who are experienced in this matter recommend distributing money at the beginning of the salary at the same time, laying them out in piles, or envelopes with inscriptions for what they are intended for.
There is also a simplified expense tracking system. For example, you want to find out How long money your family or you personally spend on this or that entertainment, food, etc. per month. To do this, you only need to record these expenses, and you will easily find out the answer to your question.
Third, you don’t have to write down these endless cash expenses in order to make any big purchase.
But it also happens that at the end of the month we ourselves do not understand where so much money could be spent, because we didn’t buy anything. That is why accounting is needed in order to know for what, where and How long. Let it be the most primitive, but then there will be no conflicts and scandals in the family, you will not have to think about how to “survive” until the next salary.
There is also an axiom that with the correct and systematic planning of funds, you can learn a lot about the preferences and habits of your family members.
With regard to programs to control the family budget, they are great help to control the expenditure of money. The main thing is that such a program is convenient, easy to use, accessible even to people without financial education and, of course, Russian-speaking.
With this kind of programs you can:
- keep a deep record of both income and expenses of the whole family and each of its members separately;
- calculate cash expenses for a certain period of time;
- monitor the number of debts;
- you can easily plan an expensive purchase;
- monitor loan payments and much more.
Family budgeting instills a sense of proportion. You will appreciate your “hard-earned” money more, you will stop making senseless and unnecessary purchases.