Coming Home Series - IV

So, we’ve prayed, we’ve studied scripture, and we’ve talked with the head of the household.

What’s left to do? All of the praying, studying, and talking is good, but without action and execution your desires are simply just that… a desire.

In this Series I will focus on how my husband and I developed a plan so that I could transition home, going from two incomes to one. The theme of this series will be, sacrifice.

As I mentioned in Part II of this series, doing God’s will many times will result in some sort of sacrifice that will have to be made. Jesus Christ made the ultimate sacrifice on the Cross by dying for the sins of those that would believe in Him. In that same manner, as Christians, as we strive to be a light for Christ and desire to glorify God, we too may have to make sacrifices. Through sacrifice, what you’ll find is a drawing nearer to God in ways that you may have never thought possible.

In order to assess what sort of sacrifice you will need to make in going from two incomes to one income, you will need to create a “financial picture” that you can use to make sound decisions for the execution of your plans. The information that you will need for your financial picture are, monthly expenses, total current income, and total savings (if any available).

Monthly Expenses: If you do not currently maintain a record, spreadsheet, notebook, etc. of what your regular monthly expenses are, you can generate this information in a short period of time by recording this information over a 2-3 month long period by recording expenses from receipts, check book records, or from bank records from an online statement. Wherever you can pull information on expenses, store this information in one location so that you can effectively calculate your average expenses from one month to the next.

Here is one example of a financial budgeting spreadsheet that you can use to get you started,

(from, https://www.bankofamerica.com/deposits/manage/creating-a-budget.go)

Once you have your financial picture with two incomes, copy and create a new financial picture with ONE income. This will be your “vision” spreadsheet and will include all of your current expenses, but one income. To do this, delete the second salary from the spreadsheet/document.

After you remove the second income from your spreadsheet, if you do not have available funds in your vision spreadsheet to cover all of your expenses, then you will need to consider the areas where you can make sacrifices to cut back and downsize in certain areas so that your expenses are not MORE than your one-income budget.

Your end goal in an assessment of your expenses and developing a get-well plan is to get your expenses below your sole income to a level that allows you to set aside savings that is suitable for you and your family.