Budgeting Gives You Freedom, NOT Constriction

The vast majority of people don’t like doing anything with budgets. Even some of the top finance gurus out there will insist budgets are too terrible to reckon with. Why is that?

“I don’t have the time for budgets,” they say.

“It’s frustrating to figure out.”

“It’s sounds stressful!”

Hm. If that’s the case, then what do you do instead to stay on top of everything.

“Have automated systems in place that pay the essentials and track everything for me.”

Y’all. YOU JUST DESCRIBED A BUDGET.

I think most people are just allergic to Excel. Really, anything involving spreadsheets inspires some kind of primal fear. Maybe ancient human predators were obsessively organized. Maybe they had their own version of the Microsoft Office Suite. (#ancientaliens)

Whatever the reason, it makes lines and data seem too scary and overwhelming to tackle.

Saving Yourself from the Fear

So… don’t, then. If it’s really THAT time-consuming, frustrating, or stressful for you to do, you can just look at ONE line instead of several.

That line: the summary.

If you’re satisfied with the summary listed, that’s your budget. If you want it to be a smaller number, you now know you’re spending too much and need to pull it back.

Budgeting is exactly what gives you the freedom to spend whatever it is you know you can afford. It’s permission for whatever you want to spend money on, lattes or beers or otherwise.  Budgeting freedom helps give me the green light to spend what I want. Without the budget I wouldn’t know what the hell my money was doing and worry endlessly if I spend over $100 on a few dinners with friends or something. Now, with my fun money category of $200, I’m never anxious or worried about my spend. There’s not even a little voice in the back of my head over it!

It’s a system that will work for almost anyone that’s willing to try it.

Tackling the Excuses

Getting started with it is the only significant time sink you’ll encounter, which might take a few hours of your time to get set up properly. Consider it an easy price to pay that goes towards the adulting tax. Once the systems are set in place, that’s it! It then takes less time to check in with your budget than it does to write an Instagram caption or tweet. It takes maybe two seconds to click on your budget or bank app to check out what you have left to spend. Streamlined tech is the way to go on this. It’s not even a frustrating endeavor, either, unless you’re actually being possessed by a medieval ghost who can’t even figure out a doorbell.

If you’re still unwilling to do it because it makes you feel bad, you’re not thinking clearly. Take it from me: you will vastly prefer “feeling bad” to the alternatives of falling into avoidable debt, being stuck in a bad situation you can’t pay your way out of, or lying to your significant other about your money problems,  The alternative to “feeling bad” about budgeting is digging yourself further into the pits of despair. In other words, you’re choosing to feel bad anyways, but combined with being worse off. You’re not that stupid. Let’s go ahead and give you budgeting FREEDOM.

Don’t Like Spreadsheet Budgets? Use Buckets Instead.

I like throwing everything into a bucket instead of tracking all my expenses. That’s what I need, and your needs could be vastly different. It’s all good; we’re going to the same place, but we didn’t start off in the same location. The road to Rome will be different when you’re starting from Spain or Russia.

Some folks need to write down every. single. item. purchased. I don’t; I only ever might so you all can pore over my expenses and rip them apart if so desired.

Again, tracking every single expense is NOT the only way to budgeting freedom! I like my categories instead. I group my rent payments with my utilities, and have a category for everything that isn’t my grocery haul, phone bill, or the aforementioned rent grouping. In total that’s about four categories: rent/utilities, groceries, phone, and miscellaneous. That’s it! How easy is that!!

Now there’s no wondering what actually happened with your money. You put in a measly couple of hours at the beginning and now don’t need to think about it for more than a few seconds. You have achieved budgeting freedom. 🥳

Does thinking about your budget stress you out? What are you doing to get over that hurdle?