- on-call job income;
- business commission;
- business profit;
- husband’s salary;
- rebates;
- etc.
2. I list all of our expenses for the following month. There are two (2) categories for our expenses namely, fixed and variable expenses.
Fixed expenses are those expenses that are not changing each month such as the following:
- mortgage
- condo dues
- insurance
- cable
- internet
- etc.
Variable expenses are those expenses that can vary each month such the following:
- grocery
- electric bill
- gasoline
- water bill
- etc.
3. I subtract tithe, savings and total expenses from the total income. When doing this, the result should be zero.
The tithe is 10% our gross income and we are giving this back to our local church who takes good care of us spiritually and visits us to check if everything is well with us. My family believe that the tithe is not ours, it is God’s so it is just right for us to bring Him back what belongs to Him. Malachi 3: 10 says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it”.
We then take 20% of our income and put it into our savings account. We are also working on establishing our Emergency Fund so that when emergency arises, we have something to deal with it.
Living below 70% of our total net income every month is our goal. Honestly, there are times when we spent more than 70% of our net income due to some unforeseen things. But we never stop trying each month to do our best so we can achieve our family’s financial goal. We desire to be debt-free soonest so we should take actions and sacrifices.
4. We monitor our budget throughout the month. My husband and I are constantly recording all of our expenses everyday. Even a single peso counts just to ensure that we are staying on top of our budget.
Well, that’s it guys. I hope that this will help you in your family finances. If you have some questions and suggestions, leave us a comment. We are so excited to hear from you. God bless you!
Love lots,
“Hello! I could have sworn I’ve been to this blog before but after browsing through some of the post I realized it’s new to me. Anyways, I’m definitely happy I found it and I’ll be book-marking and checking back frequently!”