You Need A Budget

One of the biggest and most powerful changes in my life that Cat has brought, has been the seemingly boring and oft ignored topic of budgeting. Before you turn off completely, let me tell you that this has been genuinely life-changing, and also one of the most fun and even simple.

Now I am converted and have come through the transition, I think that budgeting is an essential part of life, whether you be single or in a couple, if you have children or not, regardless of whether you work or stay home or even if you are so rich you don’t worry about money!

One of the things I have heard, or maybe even said, is that I don’t need to budget. I know how much money I have/I spend it anyway/I can always get another loan etc etc are all excuses said by people who have never even tried to budget. Others see it as geeky or only for mathematical geniuses. Some people just don’t know what’s good for them. So trusting that you do need to budget, what is in it for you?

For me the greatest aspect of budgeting, is being able to sleep soundly at night knowing that the money practically looks after itself (anyone who knows me, will know that I am now religious about our money — whether it be saving it, or spending it in the most frugal manner). I don’t need to worry any more about how to pay the bills, nor if I will even have enough to pay them in the first place. I know exactly how much I have to spend on “fun” things, or petrol for my car, food for my belly, how much I have for new glasses, furniture, birthdays, Christmas… the list goes on.

It also allows me to save. Rather than have some good months where I seemingly have lots of money, which is tempting to spend on luxuries, and bad months where I seem to have no end of bills to pay, I now spread the cost of living over the months. For example, lets say that my car insurance will need to be renewed in 6 months time, at a cost of £600. By saving £100 a month for 6 months, I will have enough to pay it. The alternative that most people face, is trying to find the entire £600 from just one months wage packet — and there are only so many of those types of things that non-budgeting folks can handle!

There are many other positive aspects that budgeting brings, but by now I hope that you have even a tiny idea that budgeting can be a good thing. Maybe you want to investigate it some more. But where do you start? Before I started on budgeting, Cat would take care of all our financial responsibilities. She would budget on paper. But a time came where I could no longer just be a passenger, and I needed to share the budgeting tasks.

As I love computers and feeling that I could find a really great program to handle my money, I dived onto the net. I already knew of Microsoft Money, if only the name of it. So I looked at that first. Seemingly it would handle what I wanted to a fashion. During my research, the name Quicken would come up often. I felt that one of these programs would do what I wanted, and so my next task was to determine the differences between them. And to save you the research, I’ll tell you the conclusion I reached. The best program for budgeting — is neither of them! Almost everywhere I looked I would come across references by people along the lines of “Both of these programs are good, but you should look at YNAB”. So I did.

Related posts:

1. Cashback
2. I go driving in my car
3. Super Size This!

Pages: 1 2 3 4