Creating and sticking to a budget can be difficult for families with a regular income, but it’s even trickier for farm families, since the business is tied so closely to the household. Income varies widely from month to month and year to year, and so do expenses. Even though many of those variations are seasonal, it’s impossible to predict what will happen.

“Household expenses are usually small relative to business expenses,” says Janet Bechman of Purdue University’s Department of Consumer Sciences and Retailing. “Many households find it difficult to control family living expenses when they spend large amounts for agricultural supplies. Having only one bank account for both business expenses and family expenses can make this even more challenging.”

A good first step to establishing a budget is to track household expenses. If your mortgage and utility bills include home and farm use, try to determine the percentage that can be attributed to the home, and include that in your list.

Take a look at your bank statement and receipts to estimate what you have spent over the past few months. Categories should include groceries, restaurants, clothing, housing, health care and insurance, recreation, gifts and donations, transportation (payments, maintenance, gas, insurance), education, life insurance, auto insurance, and savings. Customize your list based on your family. Maybe you have day care expenses or perhaps you need to budget for a gym membership or piano lessons.

It’s also a good idea to budget for things like vacations, vehicles that may need to be purchased, home renovations, and other larger expenses. Keep these savings separate so you’ll have the money to pay for them when it’s time.

There’s an app for that

Once you have established your categories and have examined your past spending, take a few months and carefully track everything you spend. Writing expenditures in a notebook may work well for some families, but there are several apps available that can help the whole family track together.

The YNAB (You Need a Budget) app costs $5 per month. It automatically imports bank accounts and expenses, allows you to create a custom budget, and syncs between devices so you and your spouse can track together. HomeBudget with Sync is $5.99 and also shares information between devices. It requires you to manually enter income and expenses, which may be better for irregular incomes. Coinkeeper costs $1.99 per month for the premium version and acts like an envelope system, dividing money into different categories.

If you’d prefer to start out with a free app, there are plenty of those available, as well. Fudget is a good choice for beginners. It tracks income and expenses and cleanly tracks how money is spent. Dollarbird uses a calendar view so it’s easier to see what and how you spend on each day of the month. Spending Tracker lets you choose to track weekly, monthly, or yearly, and lets you sort transactions by date, name, category, or amount.

Money in vs. money out

Once you’ve tracked your expenses, take a hard look at each category. Are you spending way too much money at restaurants? How much could you save by packing your lunch a couple of days a week or taking a cooler of food to the kids’ baseball game instead of eating at the concession stand? Set goals for each category and work together as a family to come up with ways to reduce expenses where needed.

Next, examine your income. Take a look at average farm income for the past couple of years. Of course, much of the farm income may have to go back into the farm. “There is competition between your family and your farm for the use of cash,” Bechman says. “It is often difficult to decide whether to invest farm-business profits back into the farm or to make expenditures for the home or the family.”

Once you have your household budget in place, however, you’ll know exactly how much you need to cover it. Many families with off-farm incomes flow all of that money into the household budget and make up the difference with farm income, if needed. Of course, many families must pay for all of their household expenses with off-farm jobs, plus cover the loss on the farm.

In 2014, only 40% of residence farms had positive income from farming activities, accrding to USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS), and those farms contributed only 7% to their total household income. For intermediate farms, 56% had positive farm income, making up 27% of their total household income. Commercial farms had positive income 85% of the time, aaccounting for 77% of their total household income.

“Even when your income is sufficient to cover your immediate living expenses, you may find that you will need to decrease your expenses or increase your income to reach your goals, increase your nonfarm investments, or make additional farm investments,” Bechman says. “This type of planning will not lead to miracles. However, it can be an invaluable tool in helping you manage your family finances. You will be able to see where you are and where you want to be in the future.”