Track your money with these free printables! (2024)

Ifyou feel completely clueless about family finance, struggle to understand where your money goes each month, or just need a better way to track your spending, our free printable family finance organizer will help pull your spending and saving together into one binder.

Don’t think you need a family finance binder?

Let’s think about this together.

Reasons you need a Family Finance Planner

Maybe your life has been peachy for the last several years. You wake each day and check your bank balance. If it looks a little short for the upcoming bills, you make a quick transfer from savings or find a way to make a quick buck to create enough of a cushion to keep Mr. Bank’s tummy full.

So why should you bother with a family finance organizer?

Know where your money is going

One of the scariestgames my husband and I have played with our personal finances is called, Blind Man’s Money.

In this game, you put a jar of cash in the middle of the room and pull out a handful of bills while blindfolded.

With your first wad of money, you have to pay your bills. Then, you can return to the jar to pull out another handful of cash to pay for groceries and gasoline.

Whatever remains in the jar… This is the money you have to live off for the rest of the month and you HOPE it is enough to pay everything including those unexpected expenses.

Okay, so I totally made that game up. But if you are walking around in this oblivious state of financial denial, you might as well be playing games with your money.

Why do we do this? I mean… you wouldn’t walk into your closet without a light and get dressed! Who knows what you would end up wearing and if it would even match?

Then why do we approach our finances blindly when they are much more serious than the clothes we wear?

Make better choices

You need to know where you money is going so you can make sure you are maximizing what you have.

I have lived a life where we spent money without considering what would happen when I receive an unexpected bill the next day. And what happened?

• Oops! I forgot about that debit transfer!
• Uh no! The hot water heater died!
• How did we bounce a check?

When I am watching our family finances, I can consider our priorities and make better choices with the money with which God entrusts to us.

Prepare for the unexpected

When I consider the last decade or more, I can easily see the pitfalls we made with our finances, like our bankruptcy and when we almost lost our home. There are other incidents far less detrimental, but each has a definite similarity…

We did not plan ahead.

Most of the worst moment were the results of something completely unexpected: a job loss, a weather disaster, a sick child… If only we had been prepared for those instances!

Having money ready in case of an emergency eliminates stress, provides for your family in times of need, and JUST. MAKES. SENSE.

Acknowledge the source

Stewardship is not a characteristic with which we are born. We must learn to be responsible with our money because, after all, it doesn’t really belong to us.