I welcome you to my blog. Budgeting is crucial if you really want to gain financial freedom; failure to make budgeting your thing means you will always be a slave to unnecessary and unplanned expenses. Budgeting is how you stick to the plan and focus on what is important and only go for needs and only go for wants when you have enough to spare. Without budgeting, there is a high chance one can go for wants instead of needs, but with a budget, you will realise you go for more of needs than wants, as wants will be the last ones on your list.
You don't need to be married and have kids before you need budgeting; you as an individual need budgeting to help keep your finances on track and ensure your financial growth. Some of us felt like you had to get to a certain age before budgeting becomes a necessity to help grow your finances, and we were forced to learn the hard way: without budgeting, you will have no savings at all, and you will have no emergency funds. You don't have to be earning millions before budgeting becomes a part of your life. If you cannot live by a budget when your earnings are not so big, how do you think you can practise budgeting when you start earning big?
Your income does not matter; whether big or small, we all need budgeting to help our finances stay on track as well as ensure that our financial life experiences progress. The lack of budgeting can result in little or no growth at all in the financial aspect of our lives, which is bad and not something anyone will love to experience, but failure to live by a budget makes experiencing that inevitable. There are a few ways I budget my every income, and it has helped me a lot.
First and foremost, you have to tell yourself the truth. Some of us lie to ourselves by telling ourselves that our extravagant lifestyle is a habit or a lifestyle we cannot do without, but all of that is the lie we tell ourselves to continue living an extravagant lifestyle and avoid accounting for our every income. Once you are truthful and honest with yourself and hold yourself accountable for every income and how it is spent, you are ready to start budgeting.
Identify and be able to differentiate needs from wants. Even in economics we were taught the need for preference; this is where you go for needs and set your wants aside, and if you really want to build your finances, you must be able to go for needs only sometimes and look the other way when wants are calling out for your attention. As one who is working with a budget, your needs should come first and wants come later when you have some money to spare for it.
