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One of the first steps in clearing up your financial mess is to set up a budget. You need to figure out how much money you are making, how much you are spending, and what you can do to keep one of those numbers smaller than the other. If your income is smaller than your expenses, you’ve got work to do. If not, yay!
Even if you don’t obsessively cling to your spreadsheets and calculator, you need to spend the time to establish a budget–at least once–to know where you stand. When you do, you’ll find out it sucks. With good reason.
1. It takes too long to set up. Setting up a budget can be a long, drawn-out pain in the butt. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be, but you won’t know that until after you make your first budget, then see some fairly drastic changes, and make a second budget. That one will be easier. For the first one, just concentrate on making a list of all of you regular bills and how often they are due. Don’t be surprised when you miss some. I missed a couple of our quarterly bills. All told, it took a year to get our budget completely done.
2. It doesn’t lie. Once you have all of your expenses down on paper, you are done hiding. You can’t tell yourself it’s all puppy dogs and ice cream when you are staring at the giant red pit that is the negative balance of your bad decisions. Nobody likes the messenger who brings bad news. When your budget shows you how big the hole is, you are going to hate it. That’s when it’s time to confront the problem head on and get out of the hole. Find the problems and rip ’em out. Cancel the cable, taxidermize the cats, and start buying generic underpants. It’s time to take an honest look at your situation. If you can’t handle where you are, how are you going to get where you want to be?
3. It’s not fun. When your friends go out, but you stay home because you’re broke, you will hate it. Y’ou’re also gonna hate comparing your old cell phone to the iPhone in the hands of the d-bag contemplating bankruptcy. Like Dave Ramsey says, “Live like no one else, so that later you can live like no one else.” Skipping some of the fun now will turn into security later. When you get to that point, it will have all been worth it.
Why do you hate your budget?
I love my budget. It takes about 15 minutes each payday.
Budgeting is tough when I have alog going on.
I try really hard to ignore my budget, now. At the beginning of every month, I glance at the line for “Cash to withdraw”. Otherwise, it’s all automated. If nothing comes up, I don’t worry about it.
The stop-spending-too-much part is no fun. But it is fun on that rare month when you see you spent $100 less than you made. You wouldn’t have that score if you didn’t track it!
I start cheering when the numbers line up to a huge payment on something. In August, we made a triple payment on my car. I was is a good mood that day. 🙂
He he, thanks for linking my post.
I wish I didn’t hate such simple tasks but the outcome of sticking to budget is well worth it.
I love what following a budget has helped us accomplish, but it’s a long, tedious slog to get there.
I actually love working on my finances – but that’s what I do for a living, so it doesn’t bother me. You list good reasons why people hate their budget – especially the idea of having all our mistakes right in front of us!
It’s so much easier to sweep the mistakes under a rug. 🙂
Budgets are amazing, but it truly is a love-hate relationship. At first hate, because like you said, it’s easy to live in denial and to spend without limits (per say)…but once you realize that you NEED budgets to reach your goals and dreams, and you see progress, then it’s all worth it. I liked the quote “Live like no one else, so that later you can live like no one else” – very inspiring. Thanks for sharing!
I hate my budget since its doesn’t sustain for long. Since I think a lot about it and nothing falls in place after that, a lot of expenses go out of budget easily .
It took me a full year to get my budget all-inclusive, because I kept forgetting things. I also have a couple of hundred dollars as a slush fund, for the things that pop up at random.