What's a Budget?

I'll be the first to admit - I am terrible with money and everything related. When it comes to finances, I leave it to DH. The man has never paid a dime in interested and I envy him for that. However, when it comes to household repairs/renovations I keep us on budget (as much as possible) and I record everything we do so there are no questions down the line about what we did to the house or how much we actually spent.

My household renovation tracking log includes the following:

• Room of the house the renovation/repair took place
• The date we started and ended
• Which items in the room were repaired/replaced
• The details (ie any paint colors, product model numbers & styles, etc) incase something breaks we can find a replacement for it
• The store where we purchased the items
• The cost of the item(s)

DH thinks it a bit extensive and not needed but I think he'll thank me later.

However, when it came to figuring out a budget for our kitchen renovation I had no idea where to start. I Googled a of things and found this:

.		Value of Home:
		Example:	$300,000	Start here > $

2.		Select a Percentage of Home Value to Estimate Total Budget:			7% 8% 9% 10% 11% 12% 13% 14% 15% 16% 17% 18% 19% 20% 21% 22%
		Example:		20%

3.		Remodeling Budget Sample Categories:
			Cabinetry		40%
			Counters		9%
			Appliances		10%
			Electrical		10%
			Wallcovering		3%
			Flooring		8%
			Labor		20%
			Total:

All I had to do was plug in a few numbers and it told me what everything should cost. It was great.

I was able to make a few changes because we were doing this all ourselves (minus the countertops) we didn't need the 20% labor fees. I moved money around based on where I thought we could spend less and put it towards things I knew we'd have to spend a little more on (like cabinets & countertops).

While I'm slowly learning to budget my money, it's tricks like this that get me going in the right direction.