This real-life example of a family budget example will show a sample budget for a family of five family members — real, hard numbers.
We have been married for over 16 years… man oh man. Budgeting is HARD.
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Table of contents
(Sidenote: This post was written in 2014, and I have updated it since then — but have kept the original framework, but we’ve been married 24 years now — I also include a free family budget worksheet/calculator)
Also, be sure to listen to my recent podcast on your home economy:
Also, finances have ALWAYS been part of our routine. If you’re looking to get your home into workable systems this is a valuable tool that moms love!
Family Budget Examples
The Road to my Real Budget
I also have a podcast all about this subject!
The Spend Nothing Budget
I think we initially started with a newlywed budget that was just “spend nothing” — which, for the most part, worked. I worked part-time for a pediatrician, Drew taught trombone lessons. He often had sob stories from parents as to why they couldn’t pay. They bartered with us for items. Seriously.
Then, I started working full time for a nursing home and Drew worked as a Teacher’s Assistant at BYU. Again, budgeting was something we lacked. That continued through Drew getting a teaching job and me changing men’s catheters once a month (yeah baby!). I don’t think we ever had a concrete “spend this much on ______ ” type of a budget. We still tended to the “spend nothing” budget but leaned a bit further from that because we were both making money, although not much.
At this point, I decided it was REALLY important to start tracking. Initially I used Quicken, but it became too expensive and painful to use. I have recently switched to Moneyspire, and I tolerate it.
Mix of a Budget and Spend Nothing
Then we moved to CA and we were both working. I was also getting sign-on bonuses and I was SO busy I didn’t have time to budget. At that point, I realized that having a lot of money wasn’t making us happy. At. all. When I was finally able to cut down my hours I realized that budgeting was important. There was indeed a happy medium between “spend nothing” and go crazy and go to Costco weekly. {I should say we have never had a “go crazy” period of our marriage, but we were not very careful when we first moved to CA — no couponing, just trying to keep our heads above water — and I would guess a lot of couples where both of them work AND they have small children, lie in that same boat}
Full Budgeting
I would guess around the time our second child was born, we came into this budgeting system. It is somewhat like Dave Ramsey‘s, but here it is — our actual, real-life family budget! (please see my addendum at the bottom):
Example budget for a family of 5
Our monthly income is really variable (because as a nurse I pick up different shifts each month) — so, we place extra money in a savings as buffer for months I don’t work as much. Figuring out how to mange your irregular income is important for you to do. Knowing how much money you have is a big win.
This is our real-life budget — and I’ll split it into
- Bills
- Household Money
Bills {this is an average and includes: Mortgage, cell phone, water/trash, internet, Netflix, Car insurance, electricity, HOA, life insurance, lunch money preschool tuition and health insurance — which we pay out of pocket for me and the kids}. I’m not sharing our mortgage costs, as it is INSANELY low (thank you Arizona real estate downturn just as we moved here), but I will share the rest.
A breakdown on that money (this is our 2018 update on the monthly expenses #’s). If you have things that aren’t paid monthly, I would recommend counting your annual expenses in that category (possibly by looking at bank statements) and finding the monthly average you’ll need.
- Cell phones $125 (we split a family plan with my parents and I just send them a check every month)
- Water/trash $85 (again, an average — but this is fairly constant)
- Internet $75
- Netflix $10
- Car insurance $190 (2 adult and a teen driver)
- Electric Bill $150 (it’s fairly less right now and way more in the summer, and while this is hard to budget for it is what it is)
- HOA $38
- Life Insurance $50 (we each pay quarterly, I just took our payment and divided it by 3, we each use different carriers because it was cheaper that way)
- Lunch Money $25 (my kids get to get school lunch once a week)
- Health insurance premiums $529 (this is down from $950 we were paying on traditional insurance — we are now on a Christian Health Share for our health care).
- Mortgage Payment is around $1300 for the mortgage, insurance and property taxes
All of this money is pre-funded from the month before, and covers our basic needs. I will talk about that a bit in a later blog post.
Then we have household money each month, that totals just about 1k (much of this is variable expenses, but I try to average them here)
- Weekly money $360 ($90/week) — this pays for groceries and any incidentals
- Costco $200
- Gas $200
- Dating $100
- Clothing/Household $100
- Personal Money $100 – discretionary spending of 50/person
- Allowance $50
Sidenote — using a grocery price comparison list saves us a ton on groceries!
On top of all that we pay 10% of our income each month to the church in tithing
We also contribute money to our savings which is included in our monthly budget.
Child Care (while I am at work) is not actually part of our budget because I feel like it’s a bill, I will talk more about it during my “pre-funding” post.
Every month, I put about $5200 to cover expenses in our bank account.
We also contribute to a retirement account for long-term goals, and have a few accounts with short-term goals (travel, car care). We also have a savings account for unexpected expenses, so we don’t have to go into debt.
Remember YOUR first step is figuring out your personal finances, the budget categories you want to use, and possibly how to use extra money. That will really help you take a closer look at your financial situation.
For us, we really made a go of our side hustles, and that gave us more sources of income for greater financial stability.
Sample Budget for a family of 3 (or 4)
A lot of a family’s costs are fixed costs. Mortgage, like power & garbage, will all stay pretty similar. Just adjust my budget to fit your numbers.
So, there it is, black and white. That’s what we spend each month.
Clearly — there are other things not covered in this monthly budget but these are the majority of things (we have savings to cover car servicing, etc).
I am a part-time nurse, Drew is a teacher. We are putting a fair amount into savings each month to cover the masters that Drew is getting, but we still make ends meet at home.
I’d love to know what your thoughts on this budget are. Do you think we spend too much? Do you think it’s too little? I will say that we utilize Goodwill QUITE a lot. Much more than most people would find comfortable. I will say it has been my saving grace while shoveling that money into savings for Drew. I haven’t felt deprived and I truly think God has taken care of us by the things we have found there.
One week I REALLY wanted a biscuit cutter. The can trick just wasn’t working. I brought it up on Amazon, and while it was only 10 bucks or something, it wasn’t in the budget so I left it alone. The next week, it was sitting (literally, the same one I looked at the week before on Amazon) in a bag at Goodwill. God looks out for us. He truly does. 🙂
**I should add that the only debt we currently have is a mortgage. We do not have a car payment, and we do not carry a balance on our credit cards (we pay our credit card bills in full each month). We didn’t have to take any student loans, and while I thought we’d have to take them for Drew’s schooling, we have somehow made it without. If you have debt I am sure that will affect your budget in other ways. We are funneling the money towards a tuition fund, instead of to a loan payment. Staying debt-free (besides a mortgage) is one of our financial goals.
Family Budget Worksheet
So, now that we’ve talked MY finances — it’s time to make your family budget template to help you take control of your finances.
This is the first in my budgeting series. You can read more at my family finances page.
2018 Update: My husband left his job and we sort of shifted how we budget — to more of an abundance budgeting, but these are still our rough numbers. Some months are higher and some are lower, but by opening ourselves up to more — I found I had to nickle and dime us a bit less.
Another link you might like: Doing Disneyland on a Budget
*I am not putting these budget numbers out there to be “woe is me” or “woo-woo look at me! We’re rich!” type feeling. I really think if people were more transparent about their own expenses it might make people re-think what they are doing with theirs, and help them think about their long-terms goals. I am sure we spend more and less then many readers on my blog. I hope this is helpful to some of you. I would LOVE to see other people’s. There’s really no reason that our budgets have to be hush-hush. I didn’t give you my social security numbers, or how much we actually make — this is just our goal to spend.
Family Budget Example FAQ’s
It’s a guide to budgeting some people have found helpful — 50% of your money to needs, 30% to wants and 20% to savings. Would that work for you?
For us, it was $100/week when we were living “high on the hog” — and then I trimmed it to $80. That also allowed for $200 to be spent at Costco as well (once a month). I am not sure what the average american family.
Man, that really depends on the area you live. I think mortgage/rent is the biggest part of a family’s budget and it affects everything else. Hopefully, my budget was helpful to give you a guide for what works for us!
I think my budget worksheet is a great place to start. 🙂 You can find the sign-up for it at the top and bottom of this post. 🙂
I think it helps to really SEE where you spent money last month and then go from there. I’d use a program like Mint or another financial tracking program to do this. It is good to reconsider your budget line items on a monthly basis (or quarterly) to make sure you’re feeling OK with your spending habits and the amount of money for your main goals.
I think, again, this depends on where you live. When we lived in CA it was half of our take-home pay, but that’s just how it was for everyone. The average financial gurus recommend is 30%.
A lot of the ways we have done this is by getting into routines — be sure to check out my courses Family Routines — if you want to get your family into a new lifestyle
Diana says
I live in New Zealand and I cannot believe how cheap food is in the US. We are 2 adults, plus 18 year old male and a 13 year old girl. We spend around $300/week at the grocery store every week. This includes bathroom and laundry supplies, cat food etc. I try not to pay more that $15/kilo for meet – that means we cannot even afford NZ lamb! We shop for fruit and vegetable at the gardeners market and this beautiful fresh produce is heaps cheaper that the grocery store, example rose apples $1.99 a kilo compared with store $3.99/kilo – but wow food is our biggest expense, followed by the mortgage.
Interesting to compare. Of course we do not have to pay for health insurance as the public free system is pretty good here.
Hilary says
Our food was more expensive in CA compared to here. Also, we pay almost 800/month for insurance… so ,there’s that. 😉 I think country to country comparisons are facinating!
Diana says
I think it is fascinating too :).Is that $800 for health insurance? Our petrol/fuel is super expensive at around I believe 3 times the cost of USA. My daughter started free public high school this year – starting costs were around $1300 with uniform and equipment.
Hilary says
School isn’t usually that much, unless you’re doing a lot of extracurriculars. Interesting to compare country vs country.
doug stine says
Ridiculous. Didn’t include mortgage or groceries, the two highest numbers of anyone’s budget. That would drive you budget up another $1,500 per month to around $3,500.
Hilary Erickson says
Umm…. I do’nt give my exact mortgage #, but the groceries are in there. We spend about 400/month on groceries….
Erica says
I think your budget is low and it’s great that you get by spending so little! I can’t imagine only spending $360 a month for groceries. My husband makes around $6600/month, plus the $1200 a month he gets while in school from his GI Bill benefits. Out of that we have our $1033 mortgage, $300 electric, $60 water, $70 internet, $40 cable, $150 cell phones, $100 gas for our cars (sometimes more), and we spend between $1000-$1200 on groceries for our family of 6. Add to that $150 to feed all of our animals (3 dogs, 5 pot bellied pigs, 3 goats, 3 ducks, LOTS of chickens, 8 rabbits, a guinea pig, 5 parrots, my husbands salt water fish, and a partridge in a pear tree lol) I have tried to cut back our grocery budget but it never works. We get bored with the recipes that are cheaper. I used to coupon and we had about a years worth of shampoo., soap, toilet paper, laundry soap, etc. but it was very time consuming and I just got burned out.
Hilary Erickson says
I plan to do an updated budget soon…. I agree that couponing can lead to burn out!
Mal says
Hi! Wow I feel like our families are very similar. I am a part time nurse (try to stay home some with my 2 year old) and my husband is a teacher/coach in Louisiana. Our budgets look very similar except I am wondering now if I need to reevaluate our $265 car insurance bill with only two drivers who have never had any wrecks and one of our cars is so old we only have liability on it. We also ashamedly eat out way too much. I appreciate your openness because before now I have always wondered if our budget looks drastically different then other peoples and if we are doing something totally wrong. We don’t have any loans either just tried to pay for school as we both went so we don’t really have any savings sadly. Hope that trend changes soon. Thank you again!
Hilary Erickson says
Hmm… that seems high, but I think every state is different. Also, we have pretty old cars. Well, one 2003 and then a newer one. At this point we pay about $210 for 3 people (including an 18 year old who has had an accident).
Andi says
Our monthly budget is almost the same as yours, even down to our cell phone bill, which is $121 for 2 iPhone 7s on AT&T (although we’re thinking of switching to GoogleFi). We pay a little more for life insurance, but we’re going to shop around a little bit (we’re still relatively young – DH 33 and I’m 30)
We have 3 children, ages 9, 6 and 4. I really think your budget is pretty well under control, which is great! The only difference between our budget and yours is that we will go out to eat or see a movie maybe once a month with our family, but not every month.
My husband has a business, and on average he takes out about $14,000 every month total, part as his paycheck and part as an owner’s distribution. About 6k goes into our personal checking account to pay for all of our bills for the month including our mortgage.
The rest goes into savings where my husband invests it. Up until now, he’s been investing in the market, but recently he’s been talking about purchasing real estate. I’m a little nervous about us getting into real estate. Does anyone here have any experience with it?
Hilary Erickson says
It’s awesome! I wish more people would be open with their fiances!
Katelyn says
Wow, first thank you for being candid and sharing your tips. But, there’s just no way this budget would work for us in Canada, the cost of living is SO high. When you put your monthly amounts I assumed that was weekly and it was on the low end. How is it even possible to spend less than $1000 a month in groceries each month? I’m lucky if I can get by on $1200 here, it’s usually 1500-2000 for a family of four. Plus…there was no childcare? That’s $2K for each kid each month here in the summer, and $500K each kid during the school year. Our utilizes are WAY higher too. Don’t get me started on housing prices and taxes. I used to wonder why people wanted to live in the USA…now I realize it’s cheap!
Pulling Curls says
Wow right back! I can’t imagine those prices, that would be so hard for us to adjust to. I guess we all just have to work within our budget depending on where we live.
Jonathan Hoffman says
The interests of all families need to be considered in family financial planning. Children feel that they need to buy new clothes / shoes often, and they need to prepare for the holidays. In this regard, it is very useful to read this information.
Pulling Curls says
While I don’t want to discuss all the financial things with my children I do agree that it’s good to have everyone on the same page!