Some weeks back, a friend of mine came telling me how his salary does not last him to the end of the month and about all his other financial anomalies. When I asked him a few questions and from what I had observed from him before then, I quickly knew where the problem was coming from - he does not have any budget at all, so he spends impromptu and inappropriately on things that are not even necessary. No matter how much you earn or make, if you cannot budget it effectively, you will be surprised that it will not be enough. But with the right budget, even the supposed little can be effectively utilized and will become great. Every money that comes to you is not to be spent on expenditure; there should be room for savings and investment, but this will become possible if you have planned and budgeted the money effectively.
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It is worthy to note that it will be almost impossible for an individual to achieve a state of financial independence and freedom if they have not made financial budgeting their life style. A lot of people people you see as financial giants now did not start big, so many of them started very small and were able to work themselves, through careful planning and budgeting, to the top. You will be surprised that many people are earning less than what you are currently on and they are making a headway with it, why not you? Even though budgeting may be considered a very simple principle of life, but it is among the ones that are heavily misunderstood and neglected. Your financial life can be transformed immeasurably by just a simple lifestyle of budgeting.
I normally use the story of the "prodigal son" from the Holy Book to make reference to the consequences of lack of budgeting and planning. From the story; the boy approached his father and demanded for the father to give him his own portion of what is due to him as an inheritance. The father obliged and divided his possession and gave the boy his half. With that, he set off on a journey into a far land. Notwithstanding the greatness of what was given to him, but because of lack of planning, which led him to riotous and extravagant spendings, he wasted the entire resources in just a matter of time and was so broke that he started feeding on the food meant for animals.
The funny part of it was that, when the boy finally came home after his extravagant lifestyle, he met his father still doing well financially even after he had parted with a considerably large amount of his possession to the son. What this simply means is that one thing was lacking in the boy which was abundant in the father - budgeting.
Without budgeting, you can crash an economy that took years to build. Trust me, what is in your hand is as big or small as your lifestyle of planning. The truth is that budgeting may be a choice which you can make, but the consequences of not budgeting is not a choice.
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While budgeting, there are things that you need to put into consideration and worthy to be noted. The first one is that your budget should favour the expenditure of what is necessary first. Then after you have set out some parts to save (or even to invest), you can bring in your "wants." You cannot leave your needs and start to budget for your wants and expect to succeed financially. What happens when you have spent everything on your wants and your needs are there looking at you? Another thing to also know is that you have to plan your budget based on your present financial capacity and the current size of your pocket, not on some assumed figures or on what you wish to have.
You have to also know that as things change and as economic demands shift, you should also review your budget and make adjustments from time to time. This will allow you to balance your income and expenditure without sacrificing one for another. More so, you should know that what was a priority today may not become necessary as time goes by, so you need to take a review of your budget to know what to add, remove, or update.
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