I have been promising for a long time now to update my Our One Income Budget for Our Family of Four post and I am finally doing it! Now, it is important to note that several changes have occurred since last year when I originally shared that post. My hubs’ income has changed and so have our expenses.
There were also a lot of mistakes to that original budget, mistakes that caused our budget to not work and fail many times. Thank God, for our Emergency Fund or things could have been really bad. For example, I did not include our debt payoff plan or my hubs’ cigarettes in our original budget.
The original post also caused a lot of confusion because I do not include things like health insurance, retirement or taxes. It is important to note my retirement account is funded by my dog walking money and is outside our budget (which only includes my hubs income) and my hubs’ retirement account comes out of his paycheck every week. Same goes for our health insurance and taxes, that all comes out of his check before we even see it, therefore, I do not include it in our budget. I like to keep things simple. Our Christmas fund right now is being funded by my Swagbucks* earnings so is not included in our budget as paying off my student loans is top priority this year.
It is also important to note that this is our usual budget and sometimes it has to change based on life changes as the year progresses. Oh and in the original post, our dog was still alive and Collin was still on formula which is why the grocery budget was higher.
Many of you have also wondered how my hubs and I manage the budget together and truthfully, sometimes we do not. However, we have been finding balance between love and money by using a Google Doc’s spreadsheet to update our budget and to add any notes that may be relevant. I still like to keep my Budget and Bill Pay Binder with the printables from my Build a Budget that Works book at my desk as a physical reference and place to keep track of what bills have been paid. I have even started using Erin Condren’s Monthly Budget Book, which is pocket size to keep with me to help hold myself accountable. (You can get $10 off your first purchase from EC when you use my referral link here to sign up to receive her emails. You will get an email with the code to use on your purchase and it will end up making the Budget Book free!)
Okay, now on to the budget. P.S. If you are new here, these are real numbers not made up numbers. My tagline does not lie; this is real life on a budget folks.
| INCOME: | $3,201.00 | NOTES |
| Mortgage: | $740.00 | |
| Student Loans: | $289.00 | This is the minimum payment for the loans. |
| Auto Insurance: | $101.00 | |
| Netflix: | $8.00 | |
| Fuel: | $50.00 | This is only for my car as my hubs’ gas is paid for by his company. |
| Groceries | $690.00 | |
| Auto account | $360.00 | This is the auto fund/new car fund. This post has details on how we use a different savings account for our car maintenance needs. |
| Pat’s cigs | $120.00 | |
| Diapers/Wipes | $85.00 | |
| Tithe | $ – | We decided to temporarily stop giving to the Church until we have more of our debt paid for. We are working on giving from our time and talents for now. |
| Internet | $44.00 | |
| Cell Phone | $80.00 | |
| Power | $140.00 | |
| Gas (winter Heating) | $60.00 | |
| Water | $35.00 | |
| Clothing | $ – | I’ve been scoring this for free for the whole family. This post has the details. |
| Hair | $25.00 | |
| Emergency Fund | $100.00 | |
| Retirement | $- | |
| Trash | $17.00 | |
| Cooks Pest Control | $22.00 | This for the termite protection on our home. |
| Debt Payoff Plan | $220.00 | |
| Slush Fund | $15.00 | This account is our first line of defense for any budgeting mistakes before having to go to the emergency fund. |
| Balance | $0.00 |
If you have ever wondered what a zero-based budget looks like, the above is one.
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I didn’t know you walked dogs. How long have you been doing that? And how often do you do that?
Is there a post that talks about your dog walking business?
I wouldn’t really call it a business, but I got the gig from a friend who was moving and wanted to send her client someone that could pick up her gig. I haven’t done a post about it because it is just a way for us to have extra un-budgeted income. 🙂
Is it weird that I love seeing other people’s budgets? I do have one question: how do you spend so little on gas? Other than that, our budgets are strikingly similar. Nice work on the gas, regardless!
It’s not always that low – last winter when it was really cold, it wasn’t so cheap but usually it is right around there. We have a fixed therm rate with our gas company and we use our fire place like crazy. 🙂
Try spending the $22 at the farmer’s co-op for some Bifen concentrate. Mix in a pump sprayer and control pests yourself! It is offers the same protection as Cook’s!!! Now you have $242 for something else.
We have the Terminate protection, not the pest control. We control the pests ourselves but we have the terminate protection due to our cedar siding and the fact that terminates were on our property when we bought the house. It helps keep our home insurance lower since we pick up the cost of keeping the terminates at bay.
I am so curious about the gas? I know I have a gas hogging SUV, but I have had one fill up be more than $50. 🙂
We always have a $0 based budget. If it’s just extra laying around I will probably spend it on something we don’t need.
I usually don’t drive very far and some weekends my car doesn’t even move from the garage so my gas is usually right at $50 but with the gas prices being low right now, I’m filling up for less, which is awesome! 🙂
I agree…one fill up a month is crazy! I thought ours was low, but it’s still around $150/month. Of course we live in a more rural area where things are more spread out. I try to combine trips, but the boys and I would go nuts cooped up in the house all day every day and never going anywhere.
Tithing is a non-negotiable for us, but many of our numbers are similar. Our rent is a bit less than your mortgage ($500), but my hubby makes about $1,000 less. And we spend way less on groceries.
Thanks for sharing though! I agree, it’s always fun to see how other people make their budgets work 🙂
Thanks for sharing this, Jessi. Your heat budget makes me want to move south ASAP!
I, too, had no idea about your dog-walking business, and would love to hear more about it!
It’s definitely warm down here today – I had to roll the windows down in the car this afternoon! 🙂 My dog walking gig is just walking a lady who lives a couple of red lights down the street from me dog. A friend set me up with the gig when she was moving. 🙂
Do you guys ever eat out at restaurants? Or lunch for your husband?
My hubs takes his lunch or if he does eat out, he uses either our InboxDollars money or is it is for business so his company pays for it. We don’t ever eat out except for our anniversary.
Very nice accounting. I imagine you have discussed ‘cigs’ before… I’m curious, did you (or whoever ran up the debt) estimate before starting school what the debt would be?
Thank you Mark. Yes, I did figure out how much my debt would be before finishing school in 2012.
What are cigs?
My husbands cigarettes.
120.00 dollars is a lot of money for gigs. Couldn’t that go towards something like a slush fund. If you cannot give to the church, but you have 120.00 to smoke, seems like a lopsided budget. I had this conversation with my husband yesterday. It is not the smoking that gets to me (yes it is an addiction, hard to stop, etc.) but it is so expensive, and this proves how much money is wasted. 🙁
You’d have to speak to my husband on that one – he’s the smoker and yes it’s a lot of money but it’s what he spends on average for them.
For the most part I find our budget set up pretty comparable. But after reading yours I’m going to give mine a second look. We don’t do a zero based budget (which is why I’m going to go revisit). I don’t think I read your post on having multiple savings account (sorry) but I have some questions about that. Our one savings is directly connected to our checking so it’s super easy to just take. When you look at your banking is it all just connected? We have a huge vacation coming up this summer and I’m about to set aside a large bit of money for it but I don’t want it anywhere where we can see it. I suppose that’s a sad truth but I know us and we’ll just “borrow” money from it. My only other down fall is meal planning. Groceries is probably what kills my budget :/ . Thank you for being so honest and sharing!!!!
Our “slush fund” is connected to our checking account (both at Wells Fargo), but our Emergency Fund is at Capital One 360 so it is out of sight-out-of-mind. That works best for us because if we saw that money every time we logged in, we would spend it. We have an auto savings account to save in case if we need another car (to avoid taking out a loan) and for car repairs/maintenance – makes budgeting for auto stuff so much easier! We used to have health savings account but when Pat’s company switched insurance companies they took that option away so we no longer contribute to a health account anymore, which we need to be. We got rid of our vacation fund only because paying off debt is our top priority right now, but if you want to make sure you have money for vacay you could set up a separate checking or savings account for vacation to save. 🙂
It is so helpful and inspiring to see how others allocate their income and expenses to make budgets work. No one will ever tell you it is an easy process and it is nice to see that I’m not the only one who struggles to make each category work from week to week. Found your post on Frugal Friday Linkup and really enjoyed it! Thanks!
I absolutely LOVE these posts!!! Its so helpful to see real numbers, I wish more people would do this. I know your in a more rural location, but if the Sprint network works near you, you can switch to TING which I adore. We each have iphones that we’re addicted to. I spend about 34/month on my cell bill and Jon’s is 41 with extremely heavy data use. The average person’s bill would be about 21 or so.
I haven’t heard of TING, I’ll have to look into it! Thank you Rosemarie! 🙂
Republic Wireless is a similar program, but they don’t let you use an iPhone. 🙂
We love on a one income budget for a family of four, too. Like yours, everything is planned out and every dollar is assigned. When I tell people that they think I’m crazy, but I find it is much less stressful to have a zero-based budget – I know where my money is going beforehand so I don’t have to think about it. I have utilized a lot of the tips and tricks you write about and they have been so helpful. I appreciate your transparency with your own budget and goals to pay of debt.
Thank you Jess for your kind words! 🙂
I love looking at other people’s budgets, I am a bit of a budget fanatic and the best budget is one where you have taken into account every last cent, well done.
Thank you Sharon! 🙂
It is so good to see what other people’s budgets look like! I love your mortgage amount;0) Thank you for sharing!
I love the idea of a slush fund – a pre-raiding the savings/emergency fund. I think we’ll have to implement something like that into our own budget. Thanks for that ingenious idea!
Thank you Kim! 🙂
That’s almost exactly what our income used to be before my husband’s job switch. 🙂 I’m right there with you that without our savings, we would be in trouble. My husband’s business is gaining momentum and we haven’t even tried advertising yet! God will continue to provide.
So, I’m curious about your grocery budget. Anything special in there? We spend about $250/month on groceries (which is HARD — $50/week).
(Why are people so curious about other people’s spending?) Ha! Great breakdown and thanks for sharing your tips, as always.
My hubs is a huge meat eater so a large portion of that is meat and his lunches, the rest is standard stuff. 🙂 That’s awesome that your grocery budget is so low! I’m super jealous!
Carnivores have to eat, too! (I am not vegetarian … just saying.) 🙂 Trust me, I could go easily double that if we had the money to do it. Discipline, discipline for us right now.
I live in Australia. People always complain about the high cost of living here when compared to other countries, but a lot of my bills are cheaper than yours. I spend more on petrol (gas) but I also do 1000 k/week easy just getting to and from work and doing the school run with the kids. Everything else is cheaper here, at least for us.
I notice you don’t have house insurance or property taxes in this budget. How do you budget for those?
Those are in our escrow account so they are in the mortgage payment which is why our mortgage went up from last year’s budget. Our property taxes keep going up unfortunately. The U.S. is insanely expensive and I live in Metro Atlanta which has the world’s largest airport so in my opinion, our prices are higher simply because Atlanta wants to be NYC.
Australia has very expensive consumer goods – some brands are twice as expensive here as they are in the US.. But my feeling is, you don’t have to buy them if you don’t want to. Our petrol (gas) is about twice as expensive as yours. Unfortunately, since we live in the middle of nowhere, we do have to buy that. Property is also mega-expensive here, especially in places like Sydney where the average property is expected to cost $1 million by the end of the year; but we don’t have a mortgage, so that helps. Wages are much higher here. Thanks to different government policies we don’t have to worry about student loans or health care. Families also get a ton of support from the government.
I moved to Australia from the US when I was 19. I’ve often reflected that it was a very good move, especially from a financial perspective. We seem to be doing so much better financially than my siblings and their families, and my American friends. And dirt-cheap airfares mean that if I do want to splurge on extras, it’s easy enough to fly to the US or South-east Asia. (I know a great little shop in Kuala Lumpur where pashminas cost $2.50 . . . )
Oh I would so long to go to Australia! I’ll just live vicariously through you. 🙂
budgets are interesting. Mine feels pretty complicated compared to yours, and I’m super jealous of your grocery totals. We spent $10k on groceries last year! There are 5 of us and we average $200 per week.
Hi, I found your blog when googling budgeting & saw your original budget breakdown post & noticed that the new one doesn’t include your car payment. I saw in the original post that you wanted to get rid of the Tahoe because of the payment…did you guys pay it off completely or were you able to find a way to sell your car? I’m currently trying to figure out how to get rid of a car my family is upside down on & wondered if you had any tips. Thanks!
Hi Stacy! This post (https://jessifearon.com/2014/04/how-we-ditched-18000-of-our-debt-in-a-flash.html) actually has all the nitty gritty details of how we got rid of the Tahoe and got our paid for vehicle. 🙂 It took awhile to find a dealership to help us out with the trade on the Tahoe but we got it to work!
Hello,
Thank you for sharing your budget it has given me ideas of things I need to add to my own budget. I was wondering do you budget for things like: gifts(birthdays etc), clothing, shoes, spending money, school (uniforms, fees etc) ,
Hi Sarah! My kids aren’t in school yet so currently I don’t include any school related stuff in the budget. Our clothing I’ve been getting mostly for free but I do adjust this budget monthly to account for anything that I might need, like this month I have to get my haircut so I have it budgeted with less going towards our debt pay off plan. Usually the debt payoff plan is where we take from. Gifts I budget the same way but I try to use any Swagbucks * or InboxDollars * earnings for those purchases. I hope this makes sense. 🙂
Thank you for your reply. Do you allocate “spending/fun/entertainment” money into your budget?
Usually any fun/entertainment money is extra money that we earn on the side or bonus money that my husband earns. So currently, no we don’t budget for it because it doesn’t come out of our budget income (my hubs’ income).
Thanks for sharing your updated budget! 🙂 Sorry about your dog!!! 🙁
I want to use your referral link to EC.com but i am already a member so i can’t sign up under you–can i use your referral as a “coupon” at the end–do you know? I’m sad 🙁 I want that budget book for free. lol
I don’t believe you can use my link as a coupon but I know RetailMeNot.com has several coupon codes for EC so you might find one to get it for free! 🙂
I am very jealous of your cheap gas and mortgage!! Living on the Central Coast of CA, you have to pay 740 a month just to rent a room!
Haha, I guess that is the high price we pay for the weather here and the gorgeous ocean. My mortgage payment is sooo high… ugh. And our gasoline bill for two cars is roughly 250 – 300 a month depending on how gas is. It is sure hard to get to that perfect “0” budget. What state do you live in?
Oh my goodness Anita – God bless you because I would freak out if I had to pay that much in gas! Our mortgage is cheaper because our home was…uhhh, less than perfect when we bought it to say the least. It was a foreclosure so we got a steal on it because my husband did all the remodeling himself (he slept in our boat in the garage while he worked to get our home ready for us to move into). And I’m so jealous of you living my the ocean – the salt water soothes my soul! 🙂
Hi. I have one question about Holiday’s and gifts. How do you handle those items, Christmas, birthdays, Thanksgivings etc?
Thank you for sharing. We have been doing a zero based budget for 6 years now. It does change do to life, but it works:)
This year, we are using my Swagbucks earnings to pay for Christmas and for birthdays we usually give gifts from our gift closet or deposit money in our children’s savings accounts. We’ll update this budget monthly with what we expect that month to bring so it does typically look different month-to-month but this is the “go-by”.
How would I do a zero budget when my income fluctuates? We are a one income family. My income isn’t the same each payday biweekly and during the winter if it snows I may have to miss work because we live in the mountain about 3,000 feet and have to miss if the roads are bad. The city doesn’t treat or scrape our roads until late afternoon or sometimes for a couple of days.
Hi Lisa! For irregular income, I suggest approaching the budgeting formula backwards (this video that I did has more info on the process). This is what we did when we had income that fluctuated. You would essentially figure out what your expenses are for the month and determine that total which would be your total income that you would have to earn in order to “breakeven” or be at zero. I then suggest you make a plan for any additional income that you may earn – you could set up a separate savings account to save money to for the really hard months where you are unable to breakeven. This could be an account separate of your emergency fund or you could make it your emergency fund if you don’t already have one in place. Hopefully this helps!
I know this post is a bit old, but I found it via pinterest and I just wanted to say THANK YOU for putting this out there. As someone who is EXTREMELY literal, seeing actual numbers on paper (and how you spend them!) for the month balance out to zero had me SO happy. This can be done I squealed to my computer!! I know it’s a vulnerable spot to type your income out for the world to see, but I just wanted to make sure you knew that it IS helping people like me get their own budgets and lives in check. Keep doing what you’re doing girl. xo
Awe, thank you so much Kristina for your kindness! 🙂 You totally just made my week!
Jessi, thank you so much for sharing this! I’ve been struggling to get us on a budget for almost 9 years but I’m determined to do it in 2016! About your grocery budget…does that include toiletries/household items like shampoo, toilet paper, cleaning products, etc??
Yes ma’am it does – I used to try to separate them but honestly that just made it more difficult for me to keep up with the budget and I usual purchase those items at the grocery store anyways. 🙂
Shew, hubby’s student loans are $1000 per month, not counting mine 🙁
Student loans are awful! :-/
I know this post is older but I just found this on Pinterest! Thank you so much for being vulnerable and transparent in sharing such personal information! I switched our family over to a zero based budget about a year ago. We are also on a one income budget so it is so helpful to see visually how others are making it work. I have taken many ideas from this post to help our budget. Do you have any tips how you keep your water bill so low? On average our water bill for a family of 5 is about $80, we live in Iowa. I would love to know how to get that lower. I also wanted to share a secret I use for saving for Christmas, smartypig.com. I like it because it doesn’t allow you to take money out of an account until you have reached your savings goal. This has helped me because when times get tight and things break down I can tend to dip out of savings accounts. I’m going to look into your tip of using swagbucks but I don’t quite understand that yet. 🙂
Thank you so much for the recommendation about smartypig.com! How we keep our water bill low is 1. we’re on a septic tank so we don’t have to pay into the city sewer system, 2. I’m a freak about not wasting water – I make everyone shut off the water while brushing teeth and I even shut it off while I’m scrubbing my face. 3. We have on our shower in our master bath a setting that allows us to shut the flow of water off the shower head. This keeps the water hot while we scrub our hair/body or while I’m shaving without having to keep the water running. Hopefully this helps! 🙂
Hi there! Just found this “oldish” post this morning and had a few questions. Do you do bulk purchasing of meat or belong to any membership clubs (Costco, Amazon Prime, etc.)? I have refused to get a Costco membership because the whole store is a money pit, but we buy meat in bulk from Zaycon Fresh.
Also, we are a 6-figure (barely) dual income family at the moment. There are 4 of us (kids are 3 and 8) HOWEVER–due to various issues with my older child and diagnoses and schools and soooo much stress–we are doing the steps to have me stay home. It’s freaking me out. And it’s terrifying. I have worked since I was 15 (I’ll be 35 next month), aside from my maternity leaves. My husband is looking to apply at a place that pays well, but we would still be losing about $40k a year for my job. We have to sell our house (silver lining is that we stand to make $50-100k off that) and COMPLETELY change our way of living.
Considering we weren’t considering having to become a one-income family, I’m scared to death. Any advice?
Hi Delaney! We don’t belong to any membership stores (we do have Amazon Prime), but my husband is a hunter so that helps when it comes to meat. 🙂 My best advice for going down to one income is to start living off just the one income now and saving the other income in a savings account. If you receive your paycheck via direct deposit you can a lot of the times have your company change the account they deposit the money into and you can have them deposit it in a savings account. This is a great way to get used to living off one income before you actually pull the trigger and it’s also an amazing way to build a solid savings account making the transition easier.