Budget Helps and Links

Rocking Chair Wisdom is providing budget helps and associated links on this page.

Budgeting, in itself, is quite simple. We realistically estimate our financial income, or resources available to us, and subtract the realistic dollar amounts of what we estimate we will be spending. The difficult part is finding enough resources to enable us to achieve the level of expenditures we need or desire.

This link will open up a new window with a sample family monthly budget that we can use as a starting point for developing our own budget.

With this template, there is no attempt to establish any kind of spending guidelines, as everyone's needs are different. As an example, we may have retired to a location that has excellent public transportation and don't need to budget as much as someone that relies heavily on the use of their vehicle. Also, if we are fortunate enugh to own our primary residence without a mortgage, our housing needs may not be as great as someone that is renting or is still paying on a mortgage. We need to ensure we include any recurring as well as non-recurring expenditures. If we plan to do some traveling, we need to include those anticipated expenditures.

We need to use the template as a starting point for developing our own individualized financial plan. Once we put this plan together we will then be able to analyze whether or not we achieved our financial goals or if there are adjustments to be made. Maybe there was an unexpected expenditure for which we hadn't budgeted. Consequently, we need to decide whether we can accommodate this financial drain or if we need to replenish the resources by adjusting future budget categories.

Most experts agree that household budgets should be established at least for a year, broken down into monthly amounts, and monitored on a monthly basis.

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