Developing a Household Budget

Creating a household budget is an important part of understanding what you and your family need to live on as you start or expand your business. Each household budget is somewhat unique, because each family unit has their own priorities, their own must-haves, and their own special circumstances. The best place to start is by developing your own household budget, click on my household budget considerations to get your thought process started.

The real challenge with household budgets is living within them! This is an opportunity for you and your family to create rules of the road- so you can have some comfort that basic needs are being met and you can focus on growing your business.

One simple budget process that was effective for me, particularly early in my career, was what I called the ‘envelope method.’ My wife and I created a budget, and took a box of envelopes labeling each one with a different budget category. We then placed the envelopes into three groupings: must fund/ should fund/nice to fund. We placed money in the envelopes each payday. Money was only spent if it was in the envelope. This meant early on we ate a lot of meals at home, didn‚Äôt travel much, and clipped a lot of coupons. This discipline helped us on our journey to meet many of our long term lifestyle and financial goals.

Whatever discipline works for you and your family is the right one. The envelope method worked exceptionally well for us. Over 339,000 envelope examples and details are listed when you search Google for ‘envelope budgeting.’ The real key is creating a budget and then agreeing to live within it.

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