There are many excuses for not budgeting. It is hard, it can be time-consuming, and you might not feel like you make enough to budget. I get it. But if you have been believing any of these excuses and using them as a reason why you cannot budget, you are believing a lie! I am not going to lie to you, budgeting can be challenging. If it were easy, people would not feel so intimidated by it.
Ultimately, budgeting or not budgeting is a choice. There is not a situation that prevents you from completing a budget. You either choose that you are going to win with your money or you choose to let your money run you. I know which option I am choosing. A budget allowed me to do so much more than I ever thought possible in terms of my finances. A budget set me free.
A budget allows me to know where every single dollar is going BEFORE I am ever paid.
A budget provides me with choices – because I plan it before I receive it.
A budget allows my bride and I to have constructive conversations every single month about our plans, hopes, and dreams.
A budget allowed me to pay off all of my non-house debt in just 14 months.
A budget allowed me to pay off my house in 10 years and 1 month.
A budget allowed me to send my daughter off to college without incurring any student loans, fulfilling a dream of mine.
You can come up with as many reasons as you would like to not budget. But, there are so many more reasons that you need one! It will set you free and allow you to do more than you ever thought possible, just as it did for me.
Try some of these practical ways to make a budget work well for you:
1. Use a budget tool:
Budget tools will do the math for you. This keeps you focused on the financial decisions at hand instead of facing a terrible math quiz. You can try our FREE BUDGET TOOLS HERE and they will do all the work for you!
2. Build an emergency fund equal to a full month of EXPENSES:
Notice I said expenses, not a full month of your income. Once you have saved enough for an entire month of expenses, you can ignore multiple paychecks and use the Monthly Budgeting Tool instead. And, you will rid yourself of a level of stress that you may not have even known you had!
3. Be realistic:
If you are just beginning to prepare a monthly budget, it is important to be realistic about your expenses. Do not tell yourself that you will spend $3.45 on groceries in the next month. That is not possible and you will fail if you structure your budget this way. If you have a household of kids that are involved in 62 after-school activities, do not put $0 in your dining-out budget. Go through your debit/credit card history and see what your spending habits are. Once you have determined what your history is, you can trim to what is reasonable.
Remember, no matter how daunting of a task you think budgeting is, it is going to beat not budgeting 10 out of 10 times. Do it. You need it.