You can do what the government won’t!

I am not an economist, and I don’t play one on TV, but I am pretty sure that the current economic plan being laid out in congress isn’t working. The primary reason we as a country are in the mess we are in is because we have become a country that has little to no self-control when it comes to the area of spending. As a family unit or individual, the propensity to impulse buy is outrageous. We don’t save for things anymore, we “pay them off”. We have no emergency fund, we have an emergency “credit card”. We don’t save for retirement, we have Social Security (or at least you think you do).

A budget gives you a direction

Our federal government can’t even establish a budget for the upcoming year. This is the first year since the current rules were put in place in 1974, that they haven’t been able to establish a guide line on how they plan on spending our tax dollars. Without some sort of plan on where our money is going, we have no idea of where we as a county are going or how our future is going to get any better. However, just because the government won’t work on a budget doesn’t mean you can’t.

Many of you have tried budgeting in the past and for one reason or another felt that is wasn’t worth it or couldn’t figure out how to make it work. Let me be the first to say that setting up a budget is pretty simple. Start with your income and then allocate every single dollar until there is no more money. Pretty simple right? I didn’t say it was easy, I said it was simple. There are a lot of different tools and resources out there that can make it easier, but until you sit down and put pencil to paper (or fingers to keyboard), you really aren’t any better than the people we have elected to represent us. Your personal budget will help you know where your money is going and points you in the direction of financial freedom.

It won’t work for me

The biggest complaint I hear when I talk to people about working on a budget is that they don’t feel they make enough money to budget. If you feel like you have no disposable income, then you are the perfect candidate for a budget. When you actually have a plan on where your money is going to go, you will actually spend your money more wisely and feel like you got a raise. The other big reason people don’t want to do a budget is they are afraid they won’t be able to have any fun. The budget is not designed to turn you into a hermit, it is designed to allow you to make wise decisions with your money, so that you can do more things, not less.

I came across this article at Sound Mind Investing and it has several ideas that can help you have fun while sticking to your budget. Remember, a budget is not a stick designed to beat you up, it is a plan on how you can achieve your financial goals. Unlike the government you can take control of your spending and turn your life around. Go ahead give this budgeting thing a try. I promise you that if after three months of budgeting, if you don’t like it you can go back to having no plan and wondering where all your money goes.

photo by: Will Scullin

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