Customizing Your Household Budget
Posted by Tom Craig in Personal Finance
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It’s a good idea to put together a budget worksheet to get started in setting up your budget. You’ll get some help on doing it here, but make sure the categories you use fit your personal lifestyle. Use the basic common categories that apply to everyone, such as housing, utilities, insurance, and food, but customize the other categories to fit your personal situation.
Your categories should be detailed enough to provide you with useful information, but not so detailed that you become bog down in trivia. First, list all your sources of income:
- Wages from your job(s)
- Bonuses
- Child support or alimony
- Rental income
- Interest income
- Dividend income
- Capital gains income
- Other income
Next, list the expense categories you want to track. Start out with a little more detail rather than a little less. You can always combine categories later if you find expenditures in one category are so small that they don’t warrant being tracked separately.
Sample Expense Categories
| Savings | Mortgage or rent | Utilities | Auto expense | Other transportation |
| Computer expenses | Credit card payments | Student loan payments | Other loan payments | Home maintenance |
| Child care | Child support or alimony | Insurance | Out-of-pocket medical expenses | Entertainment/ Recreation |
| Eating out | Clothing and shoes | Gifts and donations | Groceries | Household products |
| Dry cleaning | Hobbies | Interest expense | Magazines, books | Personal care products |
| Federal income tax | State income tax | Social security tax | Property tax | Retirement contributions |
| Investments | Pet expenses | Miscellaneous expenses |
Don’t forget things that come up throughout the year but are not monthly expenses, such as subscriptions, holiday gifts, clothing, birthday gifts, insurance, maintenance agreements, adult education classes or seminars, car repairs, medical expenses, and so forth. To tweak your memory about the types of nonroutine expenses you’re likely to encounter, look back through your records for the last year.
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