Essential Family Budgets-Plan Yours Now!

Creating Essential Family Budgets

What if this was your husband, partner, mate, or good friend walking in the door and saying this to you, “Please don’t use any extra money this month and don’t buy me a Christmas present.”

What if you are the half of that partnership that stays at home and takes care of the house, the kids and each of your personal needs.

What if you are over 50 years old.

What if you are also dealing with a sick family member, children, loss of your own job and there are no jobs to be had for you right now to pick up the slack during this time.

Budgets Take Some Planning

You might feel a little like Charley Brown when he said, “I think something is wrong with me Linus. Christmas is coming, but I don’t feel happy.

I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.

I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and decorating the tree and sending Christmas cards, but I’m not happy and I always end up feeling depressed.”

To which Linus snapped back with an irritated, “Charley Brown, You’re the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and and turn it into a problem.

Maybe Lucy was right; of all the Charley Browns’ in the world, you are the Charley Browniest!”

Planning Family Budgets

If you are caught in a catch 22 with your finances and you are looking for alternatives, trying to save a penny and keep your job, you may want to consider:

• A different career
• A second job
• Taking boarders into your home

. . . then you ar not alone. As crazy as it sounds, the best time to make budgets and start a business is when the economy is in the position it is right now. The reason is because you are given the chance to test a lot of different things and make mistakes.

Success has a foundation based on solid failures.

Tips for Successful Budgets:

• Make a Gift giving Budgets that makes sense, not a guilt list to compensate people with.

• Stick to your Gift giving budgets. If you don’t then you are wasting your time even creating one.

• Keep close track of purchases. Write it down anywhere, even if it is on a small piece of paper that goes into your wallet or purse to add to your budgets list later.

• Pay with cash. A good rule of thumb for credit card use is this, if you can’t pay it off in 30 days, you cannot afford it. Period. Budgets showing you where Credit card purchases pay higher interest rates and fees at holiday time drive home this point very clearly.

• Talk to your family and friends. Be realistic and focus on thought and creativity instead of cost. For instance, this re-do your family budget to skip any gifts for anyone over 14 years old.

• Start a family gift exchange. Our family budgets outline our plan to give gifts to everyone under 18 years old.  In place of gifts for everyone, we budget for white elephant exchange for 18 years old +.  This eliminates budget nightmares of buying for every one.

• Plan for next year. Besides the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas, the sales in July are excellent. Budgets can be set up for this extra earlier.

• Go Ahead, Get yourself a home-based business idea and go for it! Concentrate on a business with low overhead costs and low start-up expenses. Then, once you are making the big bucks, incorporate!

To get started use any basic budgets format that you can easily get from Microsoft off the internet in spreadsheet  format, already formatted with formulas to calculate the columns.

WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE?

Family Budgets Bring people back to the dinner table and help teach kids about wise money decisions.

Budgets Make “Cents!”

DOM840 BOOK,HOME BUDGET,10.5X7.5