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Find the best budgeting tips for your family with bill organizers and financial planners.
As a working mom, I am always looking for the best budgeting tips to organize income, bills, and spending. I have put together some of the best budgeting tips that have helped my family get these things accomplished!
It was time to really dive into my finances when I found myself losing sleep at night thinking about money. Finding ways to organize finances to become more financially stable was an absolute must. By the end of this read, you will be able to organize your income and your bills and identify unnecessary spending.
1) Organizing Income
One of the best budgeting tips is to organize your money is by opening up more than one bank account. After spending hours speaking with financial advisors, I have learned how to organize my paychecks into separate accounts to become more organized and understand where my money is going each payday.
Below are the different accounts I have my paycheck separated for a better organization:
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Bill Pay Account
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Child 1 Account
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Child 2 Account
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Christmas fund
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Vacation Fund
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Big Project Fund
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Emergency/Savings Fund
Who needs this many bank accounts? My family!
I have found that automatically placing money into separate accounts like this allows me to know that each of these aspects of my life is being funded.
You can fund each of these accounts with as much or as little money as you wish. However, the one account that needs to be accurate is your bill pay account.
Here is an example of how to organize each paycheck into each fund:
Paycheck: $1,500 biweekly
Bill Pay Account: $1,200
Child 1: $20 each month
Child 2: $20 each month
Christmas fund: $50 each month
Vacation Fund: $50 biweekly
Big Project Fund: $100 biweekly
Savings/Emergency Fund: $1,410
*This is just an example, as everyone’s income and needs are different*
Whatever is leftover at the end of the month you can put money into a “ME” fund as your extra spending money for that month. Whatever is not in your “ME” fund, is not available for you to spend. This prevents overspending, over drafting accounts, and the use of credit cards.
2.) Organizing Bills
Organizing your bills into a spreadsheet is another one of my best budgeting tips for families. You can write it all out each month on a piece of paper or type it out on an Excel spreadsheet. I personally like using a google excel spreadsheet, simply because I can open it and edit it from any computer!
Below is an example of what my excel spreadsheet looks like!
You can use this easy-to-use Bill Organizer yourself which can be accessed here. A blank version of this organizer can be found here.
Creating a spreadsheet such as this allowed me to figure out exactly how much money was being spent each month alone on bills. Once I saw how much I was spending, I was also able to see what I was spending on unnecessary spending.
Examples of unnecessary spending in my life included: Hulu or other TV streaming subscriptions, Spotify, channels my kids watched at some point such as PBS Kids or Noggin’ TV, or a meal kit subscription.
I never watch Hulu and honestly realized my husband and I could share a Spotify account. This way we were only spending money on one account each month. That saved us over $120 a year on Spotify.
As my toddler gets older, his interests change each month. We found he was no longer watching PBS kids, saving us $5.99 a month!
According to a study titled The Most Wasteful Spending Habits Among Americans, out of 1,015 people, 60% of people wasted money that week. People waste money from impulse buys and frequently dine out at restaurants.
When you organize your spending each month into your spreadsheet, it will be clear where your money is going and how much of your money is being spent on unnecessary items.
Lastly, I am going to talk about how we can organize spending and reduce unnecessary spending.
3.) Organize Other Spending/Reduce Unnecessary Spending
As I have already mentioned, I realized where my money was going and where I could cut back just by inputting all of my spent money into a spreadsheet.
You can use this spreadsheet here to help you do that too!
Once you have your necessary spending laid out in your organizer spreadsheet, you can eliminate unnecessary spending.
Common unnecessary spending is so easy to accumulate. For us, it included multiple TV streaming apps such as Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Sling TV, YouTube TV, etc.
Other unnecessary spending can be found with dining out often, lack of grocery and meal planning prior to grocery shopping, and unneeded amazon buys (GUILTY!)!
Write out all of your subscriptions that are currently on your bank statement or credit card statement. Figure out which you truly want to have for your daily living and cancel the rest. This could save you hundreds a month!
You can read more about how to financially plan your grocery trip here!
Conclusion
These are the best budgeting tips that help save my family hundreds of dollars each month. With that extra money, we can go on more vacations and pay off debts!