Directions:

• Initial post: 

Provide a 200-to-400-word initial post identifying the process you would take to set up a home budget for your specific household. Explain the specific cost categories that you would identify in determining your breakeven point for your budget (where your income matches the expenses). 

• Reply post:  

Provide a 150-to-200-word follow-up posting on one of your classmateàposts. Compare and contrast specific elements in their budget versus your budget and discuss what is important in the breakeven point calculation.

KIM RINDAHL

19 hours ago, at 3:58 PM

I actually just had to set up a budget for my household, we were spending a lot of unnecessary money on random things that we didn’t need. I didn’t realize how much everything adds up, a few things here and there don’t feel like they hurt your bank account too much, but when you really look after all of those things you realize how fast those things add up. The first thing that we took a look at was how much he makes in his new salary position, my income fluctuates a lot because I work from home so I really can’t add anything reliable in there from my income side. Then the next step that we took was adding in fixed expenses, which is all our necessary monthly bills (mortgage, vehicle payments, electricity and water, food expenses, gas, animal expenses, and food, etc.). We put the variable expenses, or fun monthly subscriptions (Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Spotify, etc.) on the side as they aren’t necessary, but we can look at them once we’re done to compare if we can add any of them our budget or if we are unable to.

After writing down all of our income and expenses I would take a look at what is left over every month after our fixed expenses, and then what is left over after fixed and variable expenses and decide if it meets our budget needs. We’ve never had to pay too much attention to our budgeting until recently, we need to start saving extra money to eventually get land and build a house on it so cutting back has been extremely detrimental recently. Another reason we need to have money saved in the bank account is for unexpected bills like if one of our animals were to get hurt so we can take them to the event and ensure they get the care they need, which happens a lot more than the average household as we have Belgian Malinois and Dutch Shepherds. I also just recently needed to go to the hospital recently and get emergency surgery as well, so ensuring that we have extra money for these things that tend to come up is extremely important as well. We need to make sure that we are never spending more money on bills than we make in a month, and we need to make sure we aren’t just breaking even as well.