I'm really very sorry, but having told you to do all those tedious, horrible things to arrange your budget, I've got more bad news for you. It was only about 25% of the work. The rest of the work is day after day, week after week, possibly year after year. Sticking to a budget does get easier, but if you set tight limits on what you can spend, you're always going to have to be aware of it and make a conscious effort to stick to it.
This is the bit that used to always trip me up when it came to budget planning. I would make a wonderful budget, with cuts here there and everywhere to allow spare cash for shopping, holidays, or whatever, but I never stuck to it, or even made much effort to stick to it. Thinking back on it, I just don't think I wanted any of those things badly enough to be prepared to make sacrifices day after day to be able to afford them. Dinner out on a Friday night was just too tempting to make it worth sacrificing so I could buy shoes on Saturday.
However, all that has changed. Being more self sufficient is something we want very badly. We are both prepared to suffer short term sacrifices in order to benefit in the long term - when we are more self sufficient we will, bizarrely, have more spare cash (assuming Adam and I continue to earn at a similar rate to our current one) and eat nicer food (due to growing fresh for most of it), as well as having more of the kind of lifestyle we want.
Anyway, the point of this preamble is to get to the point of this post, namely sticking to the budget. I honestly think that it is impossible to stick to a budget unless you are prepared to remember, every day, why you want to stick to it. When I see a nice new book (one of my many weaknesses) in the lovely bookshop in town, I am able to remember that I would prefer to put an extra tenner in the Compost Bin, and go and borrow a similar, rattier copy from the library.
So apart from just wanting to, what else can you do to help stick to the budget that you spent all those hours slaving over? You'll come up with your own methodology after a while, but here's some ideas:
1) Every month, on pay day, sit down and review the previous month's budget. Did you stick to it? What did you go over on? Can you realistically stick to it next month? Be brutal with yourself, and up any figures that you estimated too low. Go through the whole tedious budget rebalancing again if you have to. I probably did this on a grand scale every month for the first three months we budgeted, as I had over and under estimated practically everything, despite having put quite a lot of effort into the original budget.
2) Find a way to stop yourself over-spending. For us, it's taking out the cash for each thing we spend on regularly (food, petrol, days out) and keeping them in envelopes. Seeing that there is only one £20 note left for two weeks' shopping is a very sobering experience, more so (for me) than looking at a bank balance on my computer screen. If you're really organised and can avoid going over, you can make a little extra interest every month by putting these spends on a credit card, keeping the cash in a savings account, and paying off the card in full at the end of every single month (miss a payment or overspend and you'll probably lose all the benefit of doing this in one fell swoop, so only do it if you really can be strict. I can't do it). One of yesterday's commentors said that she uses the iphone budgeting tool to help her remember day to day budgets. It might take a couple of months to figure out what works for you, but the key is to not lose heart and to keep trying and keep juggling until it does work.
3) After a few months, see if you can make any further cuts. We managed to cut our food budget a little more after a few months, as well as our days out budget (investigated local, cheap attractions). I think that these are the kind of little adjustments it's not so difficult to make once you're used to living on a tighter budget generally.
4) As I said earlier, remember why you are budgeting. Whatever it's for - to pay off existing debt, or a mortgage, or save for a house deposit, or a holiday - try to keep that in mind every single time you go to take your card out of your wallet.
4) Work out how quickly your current budget will allow you to reach your goal, and decide whether you want to either extend the time and reduce your saving, or reduce the time and grow the savings each month. I think I initially had us buying a house in about 2015, when I did the sums, but through endless trimming here and there have managed to make buying within the next three years a very real possibility.
This is the bit that used to always trip me up when it came to budget planning. I would make a wonderful budget, with cuts here there and everywhere to allow spare cash for shopping, holidays, or whatever, but I never stuck to it, or even made much effort to stick to it. Thinking back on it, I just don't think I wanted any of those things badly enough to be prepared to make sacrifices day after day to be able to afford them. Dinner out on a Friday night was just too tempting to make it worth sacrificing so I could buy shoes on Saturday.
However, all that has changed. Being more self sufficient is something we want very badly. We are both prepared to suffer short term sacrifices in order to benefit in the long term - when we are more self sufficient we will, bizarrely, have more spare cash (assuming Adam and I continue to earn at a similar rate to our current one) and eat nicer food (due to growing fresh for most of it), as well as having more of the kind of lifestyle we want.
Anyway, the point of this preamble is to get to the point of this post, namely sticking to the budget. I honestly think that it is impossible to stick to a budget unless you are prepared to remember, every day, why you want to stick to it. When I see a nice new book (one of my many weaknesses) in the lovely bookshop in town, I am able to remember that I would prefer to put an extra tenner in the Compost Bin, and go and borrow a similar, rattier copy from the library.
So apart from just wanting to, what else can you do to help stick to the budget that you spent all those hours slaving over? You'll come up with your own methodology after a while, but here's some ideas:
1) Every month, on pay day, sit down and review the previous month's budget. Did you stick to it? What did you go over on? Can you realistically stick to it next month? Be brutal with yourself, and up any figures that you estimated too low. Go through the whole tedious budget rebalancing again if you have to. I probably did this on a grand scale every month for the first three months we budgeted, as I had over and under estimated practically everything, despite having put quite a lot of effort into the original budget.
2) Find a way to stop yourself over-spending. For us, it's taking out the cash for each thing we spend on regularly (food, petrol, days out) and keeping them in envelopes. Seeing that there is only one £20 note left for two weeks' shopping is a very sobering experience, more so (for me) than looking at a bank balance on my computer screen. If you're really organised and can avoid going over, you can make a little extra interest every month by putting these spends on a credit card, keeping the cash in a savings account, and paying off the card in full at the end of every single month (miss a payment or overspend and you'll probably lose all the benefit of doing this in one fell swoop, so only do it if you really can be strict. I can't do it). One of yesterday's commentors said that she uses the iphone budgeting tool to help her remember day to day budgets. It might take a couple of months to figure out what works for you, but the key is to not lose heart and to keep trying and keep juggling until it does work.
3) After a few months, see if you can make any further cuts. We managed to cut our food budget a little more after a few months, as well as our days out budget (investigated local, cheap attractions). I think that these are the kind of little adjustments it's not so difficult to make once you're used to living on a tighter budget generally.
4) As I said earlier, remember why you are budgeting. Whatever it's for - to pay off existing debt, or a mortgage, or save for a house deposit, or a holiday - try to keep that in mind every single time you go to take your card out of your wallet.
4) Work out how quickly your current budget will allow you to reach your goal, and decide whether you want to either extend the time and reduce your saving, or reduce the time and grow the savings each month. I think I initially had us buying a house in about 2015, when I did the sums, but through endless trimming here and there have managed to make buying within the next three years a very real possibility.
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