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How To Start or Fix Your Budget

Last Updated: December 19, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 4 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

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Creating a budget is very important in managing your money well.  If you’re not like me, creating a budget probably isn’t any fun.  I enjoy making a budget and finding ways to somehow beat it every month. I know, I’m extremely dorky.

Here are tips on how to beat your budget from Wise Bread:

  1. Be realistic with your budget.  Don’t try and create some kind of dream budget that would be impossible to achieve.
  2. Include entertainment in your budget and be realistic about it.  You need to have entertainment in your budget.  I understand that sometime it does need to be cut for a little bit at a time, but you can’t just cut fun out for months at a time.
  3. Adjust your budget regularly.  Try and have a monthly finance meeting with your family so that everyone is on track.  Your budget won’t be perfect, so do slight adjustments every so often to see what you need to work on.
  4. Allow for budget busters. Make sure you set up an emergency fund, because not everything will fit into your budget is something big and unexpected happened.
  5. Give the budget a chance and some time to perfect itself.  Your budgets not going to be perfect, hopefully you will constantly improve it.
  6. Make progress with your budget.  Hopefully your budget will motivate you to lower your spending and improve your finances.

Any tips on budgeting? How did you start your budget?

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4 Comments
Filed Under: Budget Tagged With: Budget, Improvements, Life, Money, Savings, Spending

About Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Michelle is the founder of Making Sense of Cents, a blog about personal finance and traveling. She discusses how her business has evolved in her side income series. She paid off $40,000 in student loans by the age of 24 mainly due to her freelancing side hustles. Click here to learn more about starting a blog!

Comments

  1. Tanner says

    October 6, 2011 at 8:45 am

    I think you pretty much covered all bases, especially with the emergency fund, because I will be bold enough to say that 89-90% of the reasons a budget fails is because there's not enough wiggle room to plan for emergencies, and they can (and at times will) come very often. Same with Murphy (smaller, non-emergency unexpected situations you didnt budget for). A good tip is to get someone involved, if possible. A spouse, maybe a friend in a similar situation. Just like with exercise, having someone else makes you more responsible, accountable and less likely to slip, fall, and stay out of the wagon.

    Reply
  2. Sharon says

    October 6, 2011 at 8:53 am

    I agree…some sort of "fun" money needs to be put in a budget…I sometimes run short on this one, especially when it is a heavy "murphy" month!

    Reply
  3. Jane says

    October 6, 2011 at 1:32 pm

    I've pretty much always had a budget in one form or another. I'm a firm believer in flexible budgeting – things will always "pop up" during any given month so better to be flexible than let it "ruin" your budget. You know what they say about "best laid plans"!

    Reply
  4. Eli says

    October 6, 2011 at 5:39 pm

    These are great tips!! I cannot stress the importance of budgeting and saving to the people around me, you never know when you will need it! I first started years ago when I saved up money to buy my first car!

    Reply

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My name is Michelle and I'm the author/owner of Making Sense of Cents. Learning how to save money and make more money changed my life. It allowed me to pay off $40,000 in student loans, start my own business, and I now travel full-time.

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