31 Days to a Better Budget {Day 7}

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Welcome to Day 7! {Click here to find the topic menu for the entire month along with links to each day.} This one is going to be fairly short and sweet, in the spirit of having a day of rest. :)

Our assignment yesterday was to record all sources of income divided into a monthly amount and finish filling in the blanks for our fixed and variable expenses.

The expenses part went fairly smoothly since I had a previous budget to work with, but the income portion is a bit tricky this time around. As I mentioned, my husband is between jobs right now, so our only income is from my handmade business. And that's not completely predictable. (Of course, I can look back on the past few months and calculate an average, which gives us an estimate of what we can expect for income.) Essentially, what we've had to do is record all of the expenses that we believe are necessary and reasonable, come up with a total amount needed for each month, and then work towards that. And that will likely mean listing and producing more of my handmade items than I typically do in a month so that our income meets or exceeds our trimmed-down budget. A shortfall, if any, will have to be supplemented by our savings.

Before we start fine-tuning our budgets and putting them into practice, it will help (with motivation, inspiration, discipline, etc.) if we define what our goals are for even setting a budget in the first place.

I hope that for most of us, stewardship is at the top of the list. I believe that everything my family has comes from God, and that we are to honor Him by being faithful with all of it. Even when our income is steady and higher, I don't want to thoughtlessly spend just because we have it.

Here are a few example of tangible financial goals people may have. If you have read or listened to Dave Ramsey, Crown Financial, etc., these will be familiar to you:

• emergency savings
• eliminating debt
• saving a few months' worth of living expenses
• paying off a mortgage

Or maybe your goal for having a budget is simply to live on as little as possible so that you can give the rest away. I love that.

Take a few minutes today to define your goal(s) before we move forward with how to get there.

If you're working through these steps along with me, I'd love to know! 

Please leave a comment and share how it's going.

The framework for this series is being used with permission from Inexpensively.

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