The Household Budget Worksheet
The worksheet we use to build a Household Audit, in the order the Audit builds it: committed money first, then the rest. One page.
Out of The Household Audit: Two Teachers, Three Kids, $118,000, No Savings
Committed monthly
- Housing: mortgage or rent, taxes, insurance
- Childcare, by child
- Transport: loan, fuel, insurance, a repair line
- Debt: student loans, cards, anything with a due date
- Utilities, phones, internet
- Health: premiums, prescriptions, standing copays
Committed but variable
- Groceries and household goods
- School: fees, activities, trips
- Care for anyone outside this household
Everything else
- Clothing and shoes, by person
- Gifts and birthdays, by month
- Repairs under $400
- The line you would be embarrassed to write down. Write it down.
The three numbers
- Take-home pay, monthly
- Committed total as a share of take-home
- What is left at month end, in dollars, not percent
Fill the committed lines first. It is the opposite of how budgeting tools do it, and it is the order that produces the number that matters: the share of your take-home that is spoken for before anybody in the house decides anything.
Do not annualise. A household does not experience a year; it experiences a month with a bad Tuesday in it.
Where a line varies, use the highest of the last three months rather than the average. Averages describe a household that does not exist.
Downloadable copies are part of Subscribers of Record. The full text is on this page either way — a checklist behind a paywall would be a strange thing for a magazine about households under pressure.