Budgeting. A conversation topic only slightly more exciting than a conversation about your nephew’s fifth grade graduation ceremony. But sadly, unlike your nephew’s fifth grade graduation ceremony, budgeting should be a much more necessary part of your life. However few people tend to make budgeting a regular part of adulting. In fact, according to Rutgers University, less than half of adults in the US budget regularly
First of all, budgeting is not sexy. We all know that. Budgeting is like stretching. When you go to the gym, you can lift weights, take a class, do Crossfit, run, or whatever floats you want. But if you don’t stretch, you will eventually get injured. And you can guarantee that if you don’t properly stretch then you won’t be at your peak performance.
What Budgeting Is
What budgeting is is a plan for your money. It is a roadmap of how you want to spend your money and your life.
Yep. You heard that right. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll show you what is truly important to you.
Budgeting simply puts what is important to you in writing. Don’t tell me that you have a budget in your head or you just know what you spend your money on. That’s ridiculous, Rain Man. Unless you are a mathematician you can’t possibly keep a ledger in your mind of all your income and expenses.
Simply put, budgeting is a plan on how you are going to spend your money so that you don’t have to wonder where it went.
What Budgeting Is NOT
Budgeting is not restrictive.
It is not a leash to be tethered to.
Budgeting is not something that only poor people do.
Do not be afraid of budgeting. Remember, it is like stretching. Don’t be afraid of stretching.
After all, you would expect a successful business to have a budget. Why would you not think that you need one as well?
Why have a budget?
To have a budget is to have a plan with your money. Period.
If you don’t do a budget at least monthly you can guarantee that you will not end up wealthy. And if you are already wealthy and you don’t have a budget, you can guarantee that you won’t stay wealthy.
Think of a business. The entire purpose of a business is to earn profit and make its shareholders money. If the business does not know where it spends its money and how much money it earns it has no prayer of doing that for very long (if at all).
At best, it will end up trading dollars around and never earning a profit. And at worse it will end up bankrupt.
You and I are the exact same. We must know how much money we earn and how much we spend. If not, we will end up simply spending everything we earn and not have anything to show for it.
It is time to kick the excuse of “I’ll save more money when I earn more money” to the curb. If you don’t budget in writing you will never save money. You will never have anything to show all the hard work that you put in at your job.
While budgeting can’t ensure that you will become wealthy, the absence of budgeting can most definitely ensure that you will not become wealthy.
I understand that the idea of budgeting can seem daunting. And at first it will be. But it gets easier. I promise. Every month that you do a budget you will get better at it and it will be smoother.
If you don’t know how to budget or even where to start check out my Easy 6 Step Process to Budgeting.
Remember, to grow your Money Muscle, you have to stretch.
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