A Budget Is About More Than A Budget

We All Agree…

Creating a budget is simple, you jot down your income, subtract your savings, expenses, and voila, you’ve got a budget. However, staying on a budget can prove a difficult feat. More importantly, changing your behavior and the way you think about money is the true goal. I could care less about the budget to be honest. Budgeting is about changing your mindset of the way you view and use money. At best budgeting will help you see the importance of managing your money versus letting your money manage you.

Cover of Rocky

This world is tough like Rocky said and nobody care’s whether you get hit by a late payment or lose a job the bills keep coming and people want their money. Rightfully so, as you did agree to pay them for their goods and services. It is up to us to be responsible for saving or at minimum maintaining a savings that we have accumulated until we can continue saving again. If you’re not saving or maintaining what you have you need to fix it.

Train The Mind And The Body Will Follow

Part of the difficulty of creating a budget and maintaining one is getting over our own laziness. I won’t lie I can procrastinate, but I have to keep that in check with my organization skills and maintaining my motivation to do so. Whether by looking forward to a reward or thinking of the consequences I must have motivation.

One of my favorite bloggers says you need to understand your WHY. Why do I budget? Why do I save money? Why do I pay my bills on time? Why do make a budget and stick to it? There are many questions, but most of them have really simple answers. I pay my cell phone bill so I can communicate with others. You might be saving money for a house, vacation, or early retirement. What ever the reason you need to know why. Understanding why helps with your motivation.

We are motivated to go to work at a bare minimum by understanding we have bills to pay, responsibilities we are liable for and ultimately things we want. This understanding is a big motivation. However, when that motivation isn’t enough we quit or worse get fired. In order to maintain some form of motivation until we find the next one or reignite the reason for the original motivation in the first place, we have to first understand why.

Rocky Knows Best

Listen, Understand, Act (Photo credit: highersights)

The video in this blog with Rocky delivering one of his famous speeches is simple and clear, stop making excuses and get what you want out of life. Here’s the kicker, you have to know what you want out of life or in other words you have to know your motivation for getting back up and why you keep going. It is essential.

Here’s the thing though, you don’t have to have all the questions in life figured out before you start a budget. You do have to understand why you budget to maintain one long-term. When you find and understand this, budgeting stops being about budgeting and about something more. It becomes about traveling around the world, retiring early, or having that peace of mind that when life hits you can get back up and keep moving forward.

Related articles

• Budgeting for Your Peace of Mind (quicken.intuit.com)
• A Self-Employed Guide to Budgeting (wepay.com)
• So I’ve Started Budgeting… (underemployedandwriting.wordpress.com)
• Kids and Money, Part 3: Using Envelope Budgeting to Train Them to Save (ally.com)