A family budget is a must-have for anyone who wants to manage their money responsibly. It helps you take all of your regular expenses into account so that you know what you’re spending and so you can limit your outgoings too. When you’re creating a budget, you might look at your expenses each month or perhaps across a whole year. However, there are expenses that you can easily miss, whether they are monthly, yearly or even expenses that only come up every few years. If you forget about them, you can suddenly find yourself with less money than you were expecting. Here are some of the most common expenses that you might forget to budget for.
Gifts Throughout the Year
You might budget for your Christmas presents when you’re thinking about yearly expenses. Maybe you also include birthday gifts or anniversary gifts in your budget. However, there are other presents that you might forget to add to your budget. Apart from the most important family occasions, you can find yourself buying gifts for various other reasons. For example, buying gifts for teachers at the end of the school year is often expected. If you’re invited to any weddings, you will be expected to bring a gift for the happy couple. Remember to consider all of the times when you might need to buy someone a present.
Other Holiday Expenses
Gifts are a major holiday expense, but they’re not the only cost that you might need to consider. For example, food and drink is usually a significant expense for several holidays. You might also need to consider decorations, travel, entertainment and outings, and even special outfits for the holidays. You should think about all of the holidays that your family celebrates and take a look at your past spending to see what you have spent in previous years.
Dental Expenses
Regular visits to the dentist for checkups are important for the whole family, and sometimes you might need to pay for dental work too. You might think about other medical expenses, but you should also include any dental expenses in your budget too. This might include dental insurance and any associated costs, as well as routine dental work. You should also think about higher costs, such as braces for your children if they ever need them. Whether you have dental insurance or not, you should prepare for these expenses.
Glasses and Contact Lenses
As well as dental checkups, your family should also have regular eye exams. Whether short-sightedness runs in your family or none of you currently wear glasses, the recommended frequency for most people is a test every two years. It’s not just the tests that you should budget for, but also glasses and contact lenses. If you need to buy new glasses, an eyeglasses consumer guide can help you to understand the costs and how to choose the right pair. Children may need to have their glasses replaced more frequently compared to adults as their prescription changes, but it should level out eventually.
Haircuts
While you might budget for buying new clothes for yourself and your children, you should take other aspects of their appearance into account too. Haircuts are essential to keep everyone looking neat and tidy, so they’re an expense you can count on – unless you have a child who refuses to have them. Haircuts might be needed anywhere from every six weeks to every few months, or perhaps less frequently. They range in price too, so different families can spend very different amounts. Forgetting to take haircuts into account could mean you can’t keep track of your finances as well as you would like.
Eating Out and Entertainment
It’s always great to get out with your family and spend some time together. However, it can also cost money, and it’s not always something that you remember to budget for. There are a couple of ways you might budget for eating out and entertainment. You can consider how often you usually eat out or attend events and activities and work out how much it costs you. Or you could choose a set amount that you’re willing to spend and spread it out over as many outings as you’re able to pay for.
Pet Care
If you have a pet, you might budget their regular expenses into your grocery shopping. Food and other costs such as cat litter or bedding for small animals are easy to remember. If you have pet insurance, it’s usually a monthly expense. However, you can also have less regular expenses that aren’t always easy to remember. These include yearly vaccinations, treatments to protect against parasites, grooming costs, pet sitting or boarding, and any unexpected veterinary fees that you might end up facing. Budgeting for these across the year will make your budget more robust.
Home Maintenance
You might pay your home insurance bill religiously, but there are other costs associated with your home to take into account too. Home maintenance and decorating costs are two things to consider. You often need to do some minor things around the house, from replacing light bulbs to fixing bumps and scrapes to the decor. It’s useful to have a bit of money available in your budget for routine and minor work that you might need to do. If you’re planning any bigger projects, this is likely to require a little more planning.
Emergencies
There are all kinds of emergencies that your family can face. Of course, you can plan for specific emergencies to happen because you never know when they might occur. But you can plan for emergencies in general by making sure you have savings and room in your budget. An emergency fund is a good idea, but you could also consider budgeting emergencies into your yearly budget. You can bet on one or two things going wrong during the year, and if nothing happens, you’ll have some extra cash to spend or save.
Budget for all of these family expenses, and you can avoid being taken by surprise by something that you’ve forgotten.
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