I am often asked how much people should be spending on given categories in their spending plan.  Here is the link to Crown Financial’s Budget Calculator which let’s you put in your salary and taxes and will quickly break your pay down using predefined percentages.  It is by no means a perfect tool, but it helps give you a rough guideline of how your own spending stacks up.   Each person’s spending is personal and will even vary by region, but these percentages are a decent starting place.   The first thing to check is whether or not any of your budget [...]

As you will recall I laid out my family’s monthly budget in my Nitty Gritty post and promised to track my expenses for the month so we could actually see how our money is spent. Without further ado…here are the results for July 2008: Daycare – $1018 Mortgage – $830 Groceries $496.95 Van Loan – $330 Gas – $225.88 Water, Sewer, Garbage – $151.57 (paid quarterly) Phone & Internet – $115.75 Student Loan – $115 Dinning out – $108.34 Electricity – $100.07 Misc Household items – $88.20 Tennis – $82.00 Retirement Savings – $60 Kid stuff – $57.80 Vet Bills [...]