We hear all kinds of things about budgets – use them, keep them simple, give yourself limits, give yourself rewards, etc…
Well for me no budget has ever worked for more than a week, if even half a week, so when a former roommate placed a guest post on his site, I shrugged and rolled my eyes. I read it in spite of the budget-reek and that has made all the difference.
What stuck out to me is this – a budget must fit your needs. A budget is about you, not a one-size-fits-all situation, and no budget I have ever found ever fits me. Nor the ones I create. Odd, I know.
Where to begin with a budget for me, though? To quote the guest post from above, “Put your finances where you are.” My biggest problem with budgets is their inaccessibility. Unless I keep the budget on my desktop I forget about it, and even then it sits there as a guilty reminder that I need to update it. The cloud is growing and I have a smart phone; I turned to Google Spreadsheets and created a simple budget that works for me from month to month with minimum entries (I built into it any expense or deposit that remains the same each month).
Weird things began to happen now that I had a budget accessible from the cloud and on my phone. For starters, I began to update it regularly. Rather than waiting until I sat at my computer feeling guilty, I could add purchases to my budget as soon as I had the receipt in hand. I realized my budgets always failed before because of my insistence on setting budget caps and goals so many budgeteers encourage. You see, if I put a cap on my spending, I’m more likely to exceed that limit than to stay below it, and not only because of incessant splurging moments, but also out of necessity. I started enjoying saving because I got to watch my unspent money build up (the inability to increase my savings had driven me back to my friend’s site in the first place). I even enjoyed little, unwritten challenges for myself to put more money towards savings or loans. Budgeting became a game, and I loved it.
Who would have thought budgeting could do so much? Truth be told, that’s what most budget posts and articles promise us, but there’s something about experiencing a good budget for oneself that makes it so much fun.
Wondering how my budget looks? Here’s a link to it without any of my actual monetary values placed in. You can take and use it if you feel so inclined, but remember that personalized budgets seem to be much more effective and exciting than pre-made ones. At least for me. As for different aspects of my budget, those will come across in other articles I write about money.