How Is The Best Way For A Young Couple To Come Up W/ A Reasonable Budget Plan?

The basic premise, as stated in the various answers, is to create a plan to achieve your financial goals. Thus, take some paper or a financial diary and write down what your current and future financial goals. Keep the current goals to within the year. Else, list them as long term goals.
Then, track your spending for a month. Purchase a small notepad from CVS or other drugstore and write down every dime you spend.
Then, take all of this information and begin to develop your budget. The idea is to budget for things you need, like dependable transportation, rent or mortgage, electricity and other utilities, gas, insurance, reasonable amount of clothing that is specific to work, toiletries, food and miscellaneous expenditures like Trash pick up, etc. Then make a seperate list of things that you want. There are things that you make a concious choice to spend your money on like extended cable and or additional minutes on your cell plan or high speed cable. Remember, these are things that you want and not neccesarily what you need.
Then there are your financial goals. These will be things that you want. Like, I would like to buy an old Corvette one day. As well, we have a short term goal of getting ready to buy Christmas presents.
Budget for things you need, understand your discretional spending like cable, cell phone, internet and then save for the things you want. Be sure and include retirement savings in the NEED column.
Good luck and feel free to email me if you have any questions. There’s no need to buy additional software when all of this is achievable in MS Excel.

Use a cash flow budget, and do it for a year at a time. First set up a form with vertical columns on which to record your income. list your current income stream (do not count on raises until they come thru) by the pay dates on which you receive each income item, ie: you may have income that is weekly, or every two weeks, or twice a month (which is different & that difference is important), or monthly. Then in additional columns (as needed) list Weekly Expenses (allowances, food, the cleaners, etc). Then make a column for Monthly Expenses (housing, gas, elec, tel, cable,etc). Then make columns for Quarterly – Semi Annual – Yearly Expenses as needed. You will need more than one line per month, so that income can be projected to come in before the bills come in. This is very important – Do Not plan to pay bills just before they are due – Pay them right away – this will go a long way toward building an excellent credit rating. Finally, you will need one last column : Cash left over for savings, investment, emergencies, etc. All monthly Income, Expense and Free Cash items should be grouped within horizontal lines, so that you can Plan, Analyze & Review your Budget, which now becomes your Annual Financial Plan on a month by month basis. This may sound complicated, but once you set up the form, you will find it very easy to use. ONE MORE very important tip : Do not withdraw cash from ATM machines. Make your income deposits in your checking account, and cash one check per week for your weekly cash expenses. Then make yourself live for the week on that cash ! People who make ATM withdrawals every few days, for lunch, etc., never know where their money went to. If you follow this method of budgeting and financial planning, you will be on your way to financial well being.

Start by defining and agreeing on GOALS. Then you can debate the best ways to achieve the goals.

Separate the necessity from the frivolous, then come up with the total number for all incomes per month, and then make sure your spending is below that number. Add in cushion for saving and vacations. See the site below for more detailed version.