Tool 1:
Income and financial
resource tracker
Income is the money that comes into your household. Benefits are financial resources that come
into your household.
Use this tool to track all of income and financial resources that you receive during a month.
Identify whether the income is:
Regular—comes at a predictable time during the month
Irregular—is not predictable
Seasonal—is only received during some months during the year
One-time—only comes one-time or once a year (a gift or tax refund, for example)
You can track either gross income or net income. It is easier to track net income, however. This
is the money you actually have to use to pay for your living expenses.
This will help you understand the money and financial resources you have to work with and is
an important step in creating your cash flow budget, which can be found in Module 10:
Managing Your Cash Flow.