According to the USDA, the share of the average Americans' income that goes to food is down from 17.5% in 1960 to around 10% now. Photo credit: © iStock/monkeybusinessimagesĪmericans spend a smaller percentage of their incomes on food than they did in previous decades. If you're a homeowner, your housing costs will include your mortgage and home repairs, too. If that percentage is over 30% it tells you that your neighbors are struggling to keep up with housing costs. Our budget calculator shows you the budget breakdown of people like you who live where you live. That means that millions are already rent-burdened (they spend more than 30% of their income on rent) or are on the verge of being rent-burdened. The median American rent is currently equal to 30.2% of the median American income. That's why it's a good idea to plan a certain amount of medical expenses into your budget. Meeting even a relatively low deductible can still eat into your budget. Whether your employer helps cover your health insurance premiums or you cover that expense on your own, you probably don't go a year without incurring some medical expense. You may have heard that medical costs are on the rise in this country. Is your partner or relative staying home with your kids or are you paying someone to be your children's caregiver? Are you opting for public or private school? The SmartAsset budget calculator shows you the average childcare expenditure for someone like you in your area. Your childcare costs will depend on your circumstances. If you have a bundle of joy (or several) depending on you, your budget will need to accommodate that fact. Here are the major expense categories that you will likely want to include in your budget: Childcare Others average the cost of all gifts and travel for the year and divide it by 12 months. For example, you could budget for gifts in December and for travel in the summer. Are you earning more than you spend? You could afford to devote more to savings and investing.īecause expenses vary from month to month, some hardcore budget devotees will make a new spending plan each month. Oh, and keep track of your monthly income, or how much money you are bringing home each month.Īre you spending more than you earn? You need to trim your expenses. Start by keeping track of what you spend in a month. With a zero-based budget, everything is on the table and you should have nothing left over. One popular strategy that businesses and individuals can use to get started involves making a zero-based budget.
You won't know how much you can afford to trim from your budget if you don't have one at all. Maybe you're willing to cut back on some non-essential spending if it enables you to reach another goal. You can take a look at your budget and see what you can reasonably trim. Now, what if something changes down the road? Say you want to take a dream job that pays less than you're currently making or you want to move to a city with a higher cost of living. If that's within your budget, you've paid your bills and you've paid yourself, go for it. Say you know you're spending a hefty sum on eating out, travel or clothes.
For another, you'll be able to make room in your budget if necessary. For one thing, you'll have an emergency fund and retirement savings. Once you have a workable budget you'll see how useful it can be to prepare you for the future. Having a budget that you regularly reassess will help you take stock of where your money is going and how close you are to meeting your goals. You "pay yourself" by beefing up your emergency fund and investing for retirement, you pay your bills (including any debts you're carrying) and then you can spend what's left over. But it's living from paycheck to paycheck in a good way. That may sound like living paycheck to paycheck and in a way it is. Ideally, every dollar of your income should be accounted for in a monthly budget. Let's talk about living within your means. Second, having a budget leaves you better prepared for changes in the future. First, it helps you live within your means. Having a budget is important for two reasons.
Budgeting also lets you see how much you're spending in different categories. Household Budget BasicsĪ budget lets you manage how much you're spending relative to how much you're earning.
Family household budget code#
With our interactive budget calculator you can see how people like you in your zip code are budgeting based on factors including the number of adults and children in the household and the size of the household's annual income.
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We offer advice on how to streamline your budget, how to fix your budget and how to stick to your budget. Here at SmartAsset we talk a lot about budgets.
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