I’m a planner, so I have always made budgets. I even thought I was pretty good at it. As it turns out, I’m not very good at it at all. I’ve got three major problems with budgets:
- Making them is a hell of a lot easier than following them.
- Unexpected expenses always come up, which makes planning ahead very difficult.
- I budget only for my expenses and leave the rest of the money unaccounted for, which means it always mysteriously vanishes by the end of the month, while new makeup fills my drawers.
None of these are reasons not to budget–they are just complications along the way.
Making a budget won’t change your behavior, but it does make changing your behavior a lot easier. Budgeting has made me very aware of the ways I spend my money. It’s a lot harder to justify some of my spending when I force myself to look at the numbers. For instance, I love pizza and a good pizza costs me about $20. At one point, I would have one a week. It was my only meal out for the week, but even in that case, I could not justify spending $80 a month on pizza. It didn’t seem that bad until I looked at the monthly total. When you pay attention to where your money is going, it’s a lot more difficult to waste it.
It’s frustrating to me as such a planner that I cannot plan for everything. Things always come up throughout the month and when you’re running a tight budget, one unexpected expense can completely derail you. That makes it pretty easy for me to give up or figure there’s no point in planning anyway. I’ve been dealing with this by spending a lot of time budgeting. It’s not something I do once a month, but rather at least once a week. I’ve been spending a lot of time planning out my finances, which is working for me right now. I hope it will soon get easier and require less time.
Dave Ramsey says you need to plan for every dollar, whether you’re spending it or putting it toward savings. Where I’ve been failing in budgeting is only accounting for my necessary expenses–the bills that are due. That leaves the rest of my money to sit still or be spent without a plan. Because it’s not accounted for, it often gets spent on things I don’t need. I’ve found this pretty difficult, because it’s hard for me to figure out exactly what my income and expenses will be ahead of time. What I’m doing is making a goal of putting an extra $800 toward my debt every month. With that extra goal in place–the extra line on my budget–there isn’t a lot of wiggle room, which means I have to stick to the rest of the budget and can’t eat out or buy small things mindlessly.
I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now and it’s very powerful. There is no longer this mystery in mind about how much money I have and where it’s going. As a result, I am in a place to do a lot more than pay minimum balances; I’m on my way to paying off the first card.
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I agree I’m awesome at budgeting but not following it 100%! Do you use Mint.com ? I do and it’s depressing when it tells me I’ve been overspending especially groceries. I really need to work on planning meals!
It is absolutely horrifying when you look at how much you spent for things over the course of 1 month (do it for 1 year and you’ll cry). Even a Subway purchase of $5 a week is $20 a month, $240 a year. I do think you have to treat yourself sometimes, but you have to budget for that treat.
Sounds like you’re actually doing really well. $800/month to put toward debt is HUGE, if you ask me.
I know that guy you mentioned says budget every dollar, but as you said, it’s awfully constricting. Yet having a wide open non-bill fund for “other” expenses can lead toward unnecessary purchases.
My opinion is that you have to find whatever balance in between those that works best for you. I’ve found that for myself and it makes budgeting my money pretty easy each month. But what works for me might not work for you. It just takes some time toward the process to find that perfect method.
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