What if my budget isn't working?

So, you’ve wrote out a budget for yourself or at least you’ve thought about it, but it just doesn’t seem to be working.
Here are some things you may feel about budgeting:

1. I hate tracking my expenses. If this is the case, then find a different way of doing your budget, rather than tracking everything. You might need to take out cash every week or month so you’re not always thinking about how much you’ve spent or have left to spend. Another option is you could spend a couple minutes every day looking over your budget rather than hours once a month – which can feel overwhelming.

2. My husband and I fight over the budget. If you’re with someone, you need to work on your budget together. Both people have to agree with how the money will be spent. It might take some compromise or adding things on your budget that you don’t want to.

3. The numbers don’t seem to adding up. Some people put all their expenses down on paper and then find out they are spending more than they make. So, either make more or spend less. These are really the only two options.

4. On paper we are supposed to have money over at the end of the month but we never do. This is more common than you would think. Somewhere you are not being honest about what you’ve spent. You can either be more diligent about tracking your expenses or use cash so that you are not overspending.

5. I cut out every fun thing out of my budget. It’s a lot of work to budget and live within our means, so don’t cut out every fun thing you do every month. Even if this amount is drastically reduced, you can still have some money to have some fun with every month.

6. I’m not good at budgeting. This one I hear all the time. This one sounds like an excuse to have debt. We all have to budget, whether we do it the same way or not. Everyone has to find some sort of system that works for them. It doesn’t all have to look the same, but we all have to budget (i.e figure out our money) whether we are good at it or not.