Day 7: Creating a Budget

I am celebrating labor day by laboring on our one income budget. I took out things that can not be lowered by being more frugal (at least in the short term: housing, income tax, insurance, etc.) and then split the remainder into categories. So my goal for our family of six is to live on $2463/month. I wanted to round it up to 2500, because what is $37 extra dollars a month? Unfortunately it is $444 a year. So to quote Charles Dickens in his book David Copperfield:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

Here is the breakdown of my monthly (family of six) budget:

$170 Utilities (water, electric, waste, and gas)
$115 Phone
$150 Gasoline
$900 Groceries
$53 Eating out
$200 Clothing/personal
$50 Entertainment
$75 Babysitter
$50 School Expenses
$100 Miscellaneous
_____
$1748 semi total

$150 Vacation
$150 Gifts: Birthdays & Christmas
$150 Doctor/Dentist
$150 Car maintenance
_____
$600 semi total
_____________
$ 2463 Total

I split the budget into two categories, the first one is expenditures we will have every month, and the second is money that needs to accumulate from month to month so that we will have the money to cover the (usually) large one time costs.