Making a budget forces you to reckon with how much you’re spending on everything. Only then will you have the extra money you need to accelerate your debt payments. To get out of debt, you need to either increase your income or reduce your spending. Knowing where each dollar is going, you don’t have to wonder if you’ll have enough money to cover your expenses.Īnd with extra money to spare each month, you know you’ll be able to provide for yourself if you lose your job. With a budget, you remove the frightening ambiguity from your finances. And if you don’t know where your money’s going, that can be quite scary indeed. One of the scariest things in life is the unknown. If you’re not sure that budgeting is for you, here are three reasons to consider making it part of your life: Take the Fear and Stress Out of Personal Finance But first, why would you want to make a budget at all? 3 Reasons You Should Make a Budget
We’ll get more into the details of how to make a budget later on in this article. Budgets can be as simple as a set of general principles, or as complicated as a spreadsheet with dozens of line items.
In the context of personal finance, a budget is just a plan of how you’ll spend your money. Then, we’ll examine eight principles you can use to create a budget you’ll stick to. We’ll start with a look at what budgeting is, as well as why budgeting can be so transformative. To help you make budgeting a part of your life, we’ve put together this guide. You just need to find the budgeting approach that works for your goals and life situation. We view budgeting as painful self-denial, something that takes all the fun out of life.ĭone properly, though, budgeting can be empowering and even life-changing. When we hear a friend is “on a budget”, our first reaction is to feel sorry for them. Find the Budgeting Method That Works for Youīudgeting gets a bad reputation in our culture.Take the Fear and Stress Out of Personal Finance.