1. From :David Nelsen posted Mar 12, 2018 12:51 AM<\/p>\n

Hello Class,<\/p>\n

When I worked out my family’s budget for the month, I was rather surprised how much we spend. We’re spending over $4k in general expenses without even considering how much we spend on food eaten out or purchased from the grocery store.<\/p>\n

I based my budgeting on a yearly average of income. My fiancee’s income is pretty stable during the year, but mine tends to fluctuate due to the seasonal nature of the work I do. To come up with what our average monthly income, I worked out our income was for the year after taxes were accounted for. I divided that number by 12. I then added up all of our expenses and many rounded many of our expenses upwards to help account for small incidental expenses that might have been forgotten. <\/p>\n

I would definitely make changes in the food we purchase. One thing I noticed a while back was that if we purchased a week’s worth of groceries, we usually ended up throwing a fair amount of food away. Usually we would end up too busy to cook a meal we had planned towards the end of the week, and by the time we came back to meats we purchased, they’d have gone bad. We started only buying meats 3 days out for meal planning. We lost more time having to go to the store, but we saved money in wasted food. We usually do 1 bigger trip to the store per week, then one or two quicker ones to pick up things that have shorter shelf lives.<\/p>\n

If I had to move to another stay, my budget would depend on whether I’d have to pay for the expense or not. I’ll assume it’s covered by an employer. With that said, I’d look at what the potential State and local taxes are to begin with, and determine what I need to budget for those. There are general indexes based on buying power income per State. In States in the New England area, or the West Coast, the buying power of the dollar is lower than in the Midwest or the South. It would be hard to look up all the different prices of small ticket items such as groceries, so I’d adjust my grocery budget by what the difference is in consumer buying power, then add 10%. I’d do that for all variable budget items. For the larger expenses, such as rent or mortgage, I’d be able to look up those larger expenses more easily.<\/p>\n

I read “How to make the perfect budget” by Barbara Drury. The best advice I took from it was to learn your spending habits. Track your spending for several months. After you know what your normal spending pattern is, you can then look for ways to cut spending. She suggesting assigning “every dollar a job” by allocating your income in a budgeting app on your smart phone.<\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n