# Set up a family budget you'll actually keep

Not the spreadsheet you abandon in February. One sitting to see where the money really goes, one to agree on numbers, then ten minutes a week. Works for a couple, a family, or just you.

- Kind: Money & tax
- Applies to: Anywhere
- Your time: about 3 hr
- Steps: 6
- Written by: @helg
- Version 1, updated 2026-10-24
- Source: https://helg.app/community/set-up-a-family-budget-you-ll-actually-keep

## Steps

1. **Pull three months of bank and card statements** (30 min)
   Three months smooths out the odd ones \(the car repair, the birthday month\). If your bank lets you download them as a spreadsheet, do that: it makes the next step much quicker.
2. **Sort everything that went out into a few buckets** (1 hr)
   Housing, bills, groceries, transport, kids, debt, fun, everything else. Keep it under ten buckets. Any finer and you'll stop doing it.
3. **Hunt down the subscriptions you forgot about** (20 min)
   Look for the same amount leaving every month. Cancel anything nobody in the house would miss; you can always sign up again.
4. **Agree a monthly number for each bucket, together** (45 min)
   Start from what you actually spent, not what you wish you'd spent, and nudge from there. If you want a rough shape, about half on needs, a third on wants and a fifth on savings and debt is a common place to start.
5. **Automate the boring part** (20 min)
   Move savings the day after payday, before you can spend it, and put fixed bills on autopay. Then the budget is only about what's left.
6. **Check in for ten minutes, same day every week** (10 min)
   Look at the buckets that went over and pick one thing to change. That's the whole habit. Skipping a week is fine; skipping a month is how budgets die.

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Written by people who have done it, not by Helg or any government. Check the official sites before paying for anything.
Add it to Helg as a checklist: https://helg.app/community/set-up-a-family-budget-you-ll-actually-keep