First, you may be wondering why I started this blog, work overtime, and pinch every penny
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Meet Lil Man |
Now after that dose of cuteness it may be hard, but on to business....
I suck at math. It's true. Just ask my advanced math teacher from high school. I also had no clue how much money my little family had, nor did I realize how much money we owed on anything. In those days being a stay at home mom was just a little pipe dream. Nowadays, I'm serious about this. Time to crunch numbers.
First you need to see what you bring in vs. what you spend each month. That's where my handy dandy spreadsheet comes in. Just download my spreadsheet
HERE. Once you download the spreadsheet, you will need to take the file out of protected mode (a little message should pop up near the top and prompt you to do so when you open it in Excel).
Once out of protected mode you can begin to fill in your numbers. You can change the items as well. Lets say your child is no longer in diapers so that is not an expense for you, but you do have homeowners association fees. Just replace "diapers" with "HOA fees". I also left a few places there for other expenses. Do NOT change anything in the area where you get your totals or your disposable income, this will take away the formulas and the spreadsheet won't work. If you mess up too badly just delete and download the spreadsheet again.
Once you have everything filled out look, at your disposable income. If there is a negative beside that number, you need to seriously evaluate your spending as you are spending more than your are taking in. If there is not a negative number then you are doing ok.
Now the fun part. Play around with the numbers. See how much extra money you would have if you got rid of cable. Want to be a stay at home mom? Put your income at zero and see just how far your partner's salary would get you. This really puts things in perspective.
Monthly Budget Spreadsheet
Now go grab your calculator.