Budgeting Tips for a Low Income

If you are living on a very low income, as we have had to in the not so far past. Then I am going to give you some tips on managing your budget. There are many people out there that can tell you what to do with money once you have it! But, there are so many families just struggling to make ends meet. In our household we are paid weekly and so we created a schedule for bill paying and savings. Our plan tells us at bare minimum how much money we need to make each week to pay our bills and put away savings.

First we start by taking the average amount of each bill and rounding it up. Say we would normally pay $92.00 a month for electricity, turn that into $100 and add it to the rent, cable, phones, gas, car notes... I believe you get the idea. Divide that number by each week in a month, 4 or 4.3 if you prefer, but I use 4. So lets say my total divided by four equals $400 a week in bills. That would mean that you pay out $1600 a month in living expenses. At this point, you need to decide how much you can afford and how much you desire to put into savings each week. Lets say you choose $100 a week in savings. So each week you would need to make at least $500 to pay your bills and put money into savings. Really $100 a week isn't a very large amount if you consider that by the end of one year you will have $5,200 in savings. Also, consider that you rounded up all your bills so when bill paying is finished at the end of each month there will be a small amount left over to also go into your savings. Once you have saved a substantial amount of money its good to look into other areas of investment.