Don’t say it! Don’t say the B word! Budget! There I said it, budget. This is a word that used to drive chills down my spine and make me clam up. I get it; it’s not a word most of us like to hear. Where do you think this fear comes from? If you were like me, I didn’t grow up in a house where this word was used, so I really had no idea what it meant. So when I started discussing this with my wife it took me a while to fully grasp how a budget was supposed to be used. I felt a budget was taking away our spending freedoms. This is where I believe the fear comes from. Boy was I wrong! Getting on a budget was the best thing we ever did! Saying a budget strips us of our freedoms is as far from the truth as it comes.
A budget actually provides us WITH freedom!
A budget allows US to take control of our finances which in turn provides us with the freedom to tell our money where it’s being spent. Now pause and let that sink in a minute…….. Yes, you will actually take control of your monthly cash flow with a budget. A great byproduct of a budget is our financial stress and anxieties we currently have will slowly disappear as we gain better control. Life will start to become more enjoyable. Who doesn’t want to have an enjoyable life?
As we fine tune our budgeting skills, yes I said fine tune, we will start seeing changes in ourselves. It will take us around 3 months to gain a good understanding of how to budget correctly. 3 months may seem like a long time on the surface, but for a lifetime of positive financial change, it’s priceless! As we go through this process we will find ourselves paying closer attention to sale items, creating money saving challenges, creating a debt elimination challenge, and the list can go on.
Creating a challenge and making a competition out of it is a great way to help overcome the fear we have around budgeting. Using this method will distract our thoughts of fear and focus them on how we can win the competition. Before we know what happened we will be budgeting experts and possibly helping others with theirs. Get creative here and let us know what some of your fun challenges were, we would love to hear them.
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