Yearly Expenses: Be Prepared!

The last few days have been very busy trying to look over my 2011 budget, and analyzing how things went.  It's also been spent trying to forecast what our bills are giong to be in 2012.  I know that health insurance and health insurance are going up for this year, so we've created our 2012 budget to take that into consideration.  I'm hoping that items such as food and gas stay down a little this year, but that is unfortunately not a cost I can control, so we'll do our best to handle them as the fluctuations occur.  We're going to take the first three months of the year to see how everything pans out with our budget, then we'll revisit it and determine if any adjustments need to be made at that point.  I encourage you to stay up with your budget, as many things change during the course of the year.  Your goal is to be prepared for these costs when they arrive.  As we discussed before, you should take what you expect your expenses to be, and divide them by 12.  Put that amount into your budget on a monthly basis, and you should for the most part be prepared when the bill arrives. 

I hope you  have found this information useful, as it is a practice I have found to really work for our family.  It helps us to forecast our yearly bills, and not be surprised when they come in!