Are you looking for a monthly budget for stay-at-home moms? Perhaps you need a sample budget to follow to help you create your own. If so, then you’re in the right place.
In this article, I’ll share with you how I created a monthly budget plan for my family. I’ll be using my family’s actual monthly budget as an example.
I’ll also provide you with a free printable budget planner that’ll help you get started. You’ll also get an expense/spending tracker to help you manage your budget each month.
As a stay-at-home mom with a family of three, I had to find a way to manage our expenses because we were living on only my husband’s income, and had a new baby on the way.
Having a strict monthly budget is so important. Without a budget, you may overspend on your expenses, which will lead you into debt.
That’s something we don’t want. So let’s look at how to create a monthly budget as a stay-at-home mom.
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Steps To Create A Monthly Budget For Stay-at-Home Moms
Step 1: Know your monthly/Yearly income
The first step to creating a monthly budget for stay-at-home moms is to figure out what your monthly and yearly income is.
Knowing your income will help you prioritize what to spend it on.
Currently, my husband’s monthly income is about $5,000 a month for a soon-to-be family of four.
If you want to know what the husbands of most stay-at-home moms make per year, check out the article where I surveyed 587 SAHMs to find out what their husbands make each month.
Step 2: Choose the right budgeting method
The second step to creating a monthly budget for stay-at-home moms is to choose the right budgeting strategy.
There are 5 main types of budgets you can create to manage your finances.
The first is the 50-30-20 budget style. This involves you allocating 50% of your monthly income to your NEEDS, 30% of your income to your WANTS, and 20% to your savings.
The second type is the cash envelope model. This involves putting money in envelopes assigned to different categories such as utilities, insurance, pet care, children, etc. You’re only supposed to spend the money you put in the cash envelope for that category.
I prefer the cash envelope budgeting system because it’s easy for beginners to implement. It’s also good for people who tend to overspend.
Read this article to learn more about how to use the cash envelope budgeting system. It breaks things down in an easy-to-understand format.
The third budget style is the 70/20/10 budget. In this type, 70% of your income goes to your spending (both fixed and variable expenses), 20 % goes towards savings, and 10% goes towards donations.
The next is a zero-based budget. This budgeting method requires you to assign all your income to both your expenses and savings so that there is zero income left at the end of the month.
The last is called the pay-yourself-first budget. To learn more about each one in detail, read this article.
Step 3: Figure out your monthly expenses
The third step to creating a monthly budget for stay-at-home moms is to make a list of all your expenses each month.
Most people don’t track how they spend every dollar of their money each month, because it’s tedious to do.
The best way to track your expenses is to figure out what your spending categories are, then write down all your fixed and variable expenses.
This includes things like medical bills, groceries, entertainment, etc. Check out this article to get a list of over 90 budget categories you can choose from.
Get Your FREE Budget Category Printable
Step 4: Decide how much you want to save
The third step to creating a monthly budget for stay-at-home moms is to decide how much you want to put towards savings.
If you choose the 50-3-20 budgeting style (the simplest one to use), then you’ll be putting 20% percent towards savings.
You can either keep that money in a regular savings account or invest it in stocks, bonds, etc.
It’s essential to save for retirement as a stay-at-home mom, even if you make no income. Having a good retirement plan will help secure your family’s future.
This article will teach you 9 ways you can save for retirement as a stay-at-home mom.
Now that we know how to create a monthly budget as a stay-at-home mom, let’s look at a sample monthly budget below.
Sample Monthly Budget For Stay-at-Home Moms
In this section, I’ll break down what my current monthly budget looks like. Before we continue, I want to point out that it’s okay for your budget to change from time to time.
This will depend on your family’s needs, the location you live in, and how much you want to save. To save on space, I won’t include every single item in our budget category.
Now let’s see what a sample budget looks like.
Sample Monthly Budget For a Family of 4
Budget style: 50-30-20 model
Monthly Income – $5000
Monthly Expenses – Both Fixed and Variable
| Category | Amount |
|---|---|
| Mortgage | $1400 |
| Coop Maintainance | $1300 |
| Utilities | $400 |
| Phone | $100 |
| Internet | $60 |
| groceries | $200 |
| Eating out | $150 |
| Major Insurance | $390 |
| Total Expenses | $4,000 |
Savings – 20%
Below are the categories we put our savings into
| 401K | 10% |
| Pension | Covered by company |
| 403B | 10% |
Monthly Budgeting Tips For Stay-at-Home Moms
Below are some tips I’ve learned over the years to help me create a successful monthly budget.
Track your monthly spending very closely
The first monthly budgeting tip for stay-at-home moms is to track your spending closely.
Tracking your spending has many benefits. The first is that it will help you see the category in which you tend to overspend.
When I first started my family’s budget, I noticed that we spent a lot of money eating out every month. When we do eat out, we tended to order very expensive items on the menu.
Knowing this information helped us make a plan to stick to less expensive items on the menu, and to take advantage of lunch specials when possible. We still get to enjoy eating out without spending too much money.
Tracking your spending also helps you improve your savings. This is because you’ll clearly see the category you can cut back on, to help you add more money to your savings account.
Get your FREE printable weekly spending tracker
Cut out unnecessary purchases
There are a lot of things we buy that we can easily do without. When you’re living on one income as a stay-at-home mom, you need to cut back on these unnecessary expenses.
Some items we can do without include order-out coffee (Starbucks, Dunkin’), fast food, bottled water, etc. For a complete list of items you should stop buying to save money, check out: 21 Things You Should Stop Buying To Save Money Today!
Making sure to stick with your basic necessities is the best monthly budgeting tip for stay-at-home moms that I can give you.
Use the cash envelope system to budget
The next budgeting tip for stay-at-home moms that I have is to choose an easy budgeting method.
As someone who struggled with creating a budget in the past, I can tell you that the cash envelope system is the easiest method to follow.
Of all the five budgeting styles, the cash envelope system makes it easy to control your spending. This is because you see the money physically disappear from your envelope once it’s spent.
This article will teach you all you need to know about using the cash envelope system to budget.
Arrange your budget categories in order of importance
One of the most important monthly budgeting tips for stay-at-home moms is to arrange your budget categories in order of importance (most important to least important).
Picking the right budget category means listing all your fixed and variable expenses no matter how small. Then assigning a set amount to each category in order of importance.
For example, my cash envelope category in order of importance could be; rent, groceries, car payment, insurance, kids (kids’ clothes, afterschool payment, etc), phone bill, eating out, etc.
The example above has both my fixed and variable expenses from the most important to the least important.
These expenses will then be paid in a “trickle-down” format until there’s nothing left of my monthly earnings. This article contains a list of 91 cash envelope categories to choose from.
Stretch your grocery budget
The cost of groceries has gone up in the last few years, so finding ways to stretch your grocery budget will help your family save a lot of money on food.
There are some things you can do to save money on groceries. They include buying in bulk, using coupons and online deals, reducing your meat purchases, etc.
Being able to save money on food is an important budgeting tip for stay-at-home moms. To learn more about how you can stretch the food budget, check out: How Can A Homemaker Stretch The Family Food Budget? (11 easy ways)
Find ways to save money on kids’ expenses
The number of things that kids need can take a huge toll on our monthly budget. Some of their expenses include school uniforms, lunch money, clothes, shoes, babysitters, daycare, etc.
Anything you can do to save money on your kids’ expenses will go a long way. One monthly budgeting tip I have for stay-at-home moms is to find ways to save money on kids’ clothes.
I find that clothes and shoes take up a bulk of my kid’s budget because they’re still so young.
To save on clothes, I use my local buy-nothing group on Facebook. I also buy bulk sizes on the Facebook marketplace. Check out this article to find out all the ways I save on baby and kids’ clothes
Use cashback apps
Cash back apps like Rakuten and fetch rewards are my favorite ways to save money each month.
We get at least $30-$100 dollars cash back each month from using Rakuten to shop online. I also get lots of points from Fetch rewards whenever I scan my receipt.
I’m able to redeem those points for cash and gift cards later on.
Using coupons, points, and cash-back rewards apps is another monthly budgeting tip for stay-at-home moms I would suggest.
Cut back on subscriptions
If your family is subscribed to more than one streaming site, then consider cutting back to save money.
You don’t need to have every streaming service to be able to enjoy a show or movie. One thing you can try is to share passwords with family or friends who have a streaming service that you don’t.
You can both split the bill. This way, you get to enjoy the service without paying the full price.
Pay off debt
The last budgeting tip for stay-at-home moms is to pay off your debt. Holding on to what I call “toxic debt” will make it hard to build your savings.
Toxic debt is any debt that you struggle to pay off and adds stress to your life.
There are two primary methods you can use to pay off your debt. They are the debt snowball method and the debt avalanche method.
Check out this article to learn the differences between both and how to use them.
Final Thoughts On Monthly Budgeting For Stay-at-Home Moms
Creating a monthly budget doesn’t have to be a complicated process. There are so many tools out there to help you.
My best suggestion is to use the cash envelope budgeting method because it is beginner friendly. I’ve attached a few printables in this article that will help you get started.
When possible, find ways to save money using the budgeting tips for stay-at-home moms listed in this article.
I hope this article has helped you figure out how to create a monthly budget as a stay-at-home mom.
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