I have a first family, I will call them family A.  They are 2 adults and 2 children.  Living way above their budget.  ( That’s probably most of us, but they are letting me help give them tools to use to get themselves back to the land of balance.)

The first step I did, was enter all their expenses into the balance your budget template, entered the income and low and behold they had spent in excess of $4000.  They have pretty well exhausted all their credit cards and lines of credit.  Not much more to go and then there is no more money.

The second step, was using their information make a budget that balances, it needs lots of tweeking, but the point to them was that it balanced and to move some of the budget dollars from one place to the other.  To start really thinking about what was important and what was not.

There were more than a few denial moments, but when it is in black and white you can not ignore it.

Each month, I will post what they spend on fixed and variable and how their total debt is going down.  As well as what tips work for them.