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Stop Budgeting the Old School Way

With all the extra time spent at home recently, I’ve had plenty of practice with my budget!

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I post a ton about my budget and how I’m on a fast track to paying off my $50,000 of student debt from DPT school.

After years of playing around with both paper and digital budgets, I have enjoyed perfecting my system over the past few months and I’m here to share what I’ve learned!

Get ready for 5 no-nonsense tips that will help you create better money habits and drastically improve your path to financial freedom!

1. Don’t Strive for Perfection

This is incredibly important and there is a reason it is the first on this list!

When I started my first budget plan years back, I tried to make it pretty, organized, and exact. But here’s the deal: You need to spend more time learning your spending habits than making your budget plan.

When starting a budget, the first step is to get a printable or a free app. You can check out one of my absolute favorites here. Then, sync your bank/investments/assets/debts.

Don’t spend your time trying to find the cutest tracker online or researching for days to find the perfect app. Trust me, I have spent way too much time on Etsy. They all do the same thing!

You need to spend time looking through your spending history and realizing what you overspend on.

The idea here is to realize that creating a realistic budget for your family can take MONTHS.

You won’t get it right the first time (at least I did not!), and you’ll most likely forget about a ton of budgeting categories!

Instead, have an open mind and know that this whole “financial freedom” thing takes a long time! You’ll be amazed at how fast you will learn and adjust. I’ve been working at this for years and only now have found what is best for my family!

 2. A Zero-Based Budget is Hard

I first heard of the zero-based budget when I began Dave Ramsey’s baby steps a few years ago at a Financial Peace course.

The idea of this is to allocate EVERY DOLLAR you earn to a budget category.

I’ve tried and I’ve failed. Trust me, it isn’t easy.

If you decide to venture along this path, do realize that you may encounter many fails. Reason being, it is hard to estimate and plan every cent in the month!

For example, these are some unplanned expenses I’ve come across while budgeting:

• Baby/Wedding shower gifts
• Vet visits
• Flowers/cards for a funeral
• Unplanned lunch with friends
• Tips/donating extra

If you follow Dave Ramsey, you should know to have an emergency fund, so some unexpected expenses like appliance or car repairs can be taken from this account.

But I wouldn’t consider wedding shower gifts as an emergency!

Instead of trying to make a perfect zero-based budget as a beginner, try to allocate some extra money into categories like “gifts” and “miscellaneous”. I have a category that I label “Treat Yo’ Self” for when I get an urge to get coffee, for example!

3. Focus on Your Habits, Not Your Money

I highly recommend an audiobook called Change Your Habits, Change Your Life that you can access on Audible. It opened my eyes to realizing the effects of habits and how it can literally be the answer to becoming a millionaire!

Here are some examples of habits that you can improve today!

• Waking up early

One of my favorite self-help books is called Miracle Morning Millionaires and it dives into how the simple habit of waking up early can change your entire day. Achieving this habit has got to be one of the biggest personal successes. It’s worth checking out!

• Have regular budget meetings

How else are you going to have a path going forward if you don’t have regular budget meetings with your spouse or family? Get started with these critical conversations to have with your spouse about your finances!

• Stop spontaneous spending

Trust me, I’m very guilty of this. But, I have learned a few tricks along the way to create a habit of SMART spending. My favorite is to practice the 72 hour rule. This is where you don’t purchase an item until 3 days after getting “the urge”!

• Learn, Learn, LEARN

I have found it much more beneficial to learn from numerous financial gurus than to take advice from just one. For example, Dave Ramsey is great for beginners, but I don’t follow all of his “baby steps” as he recommends. I also love Robert Kiyosaki but I don’t follow all of his advice regarding career choices and investing. Tony Robbins has some great investing advice but some of it isn’t exactly best for my financial situation. The list goes on. Moral of the story: Never stop learning, and have an open mind!

4. Your Happiness is Most Important

I’ve heard it over and over. People don’t want to budget because it makes them feel bad about themselves and it restricts them from buying what they enjoy.

Here’s a radical thought:

Instead of having a miserable experience with budgeting…why don’t you budget in the fun stuff?

Okay, so I believe getting rid of unnecessary expenses is important. Some things I’ve gotten rid of this last year include my Ipsy subscription and cable. Doing this saves us money each month. Were they necessary expenses? No. We adjusted just fine.

But, there are things like my caramel Frappuccino’s and buying an occasional new outfit or house decoration at TJMaxx that just get me hyped. I admit it – I love buying things.

So, I budget for them!!

At this time I am still paying off my graduate student loans but I plan on getting $40,000 paid off in the next 8 months. This requires J and I to live off his income while throwing my entire paycheck to my loans. It is hard to restrict what we spend money on, but I refuse to make my life miserable during my debt free journey.

It can be exciting to realize how much you can save each month by cutting everything out of your life, but keep yourself and your happiness in mind!

5. Budget for Financial Growth

The debt free journey is a long one. It can take years to pay off all your debts and loans, and then you have to consider your journey to financial freedom.

Financial freedom is essentially when your money makes money for you. (I wrote an entire review on Robert Kiyosaki’s view on this)

This is one of the hardest budgeting categories that I have implemented.

As I mentioned above, you could potentially save up a TON of cash if you cut out practically everything from your life…Does your kid enjoy karate class? No more of that! Do you watch an episode of Netflix every evening? Get rid of it! Does your husband like to take you to dinner once a week? Stop that right now!

Okay, so the point I want to get across is that you now need be STRATEGIC about how you allocate your funds. Here are some examples!

• If your employer matches a 401k, it could be wise to put aside more money to that fund.
• I always advocate that you have a budgeting category for personal growth. Buy yourself a book or free audiobook every month, or get an online masterclass every few months.
• If you enjoy eating out twice in the week, meal prep for lunches/dinner/snacks for the other meals.
• Consider setting money aside for side hustles. This could include investing in a blog to track your financial journey, or buying some equipment for doing lawn service.

I have found it so helpful to set aside money with the intent of financial and personal growth. If you’re already restricting your lifestyle, why not benefit from it?

Sure, it can be awesome to save as much as possible, but remember what I said above about happiness. You need to come out of your financial journey as a stronger person!

Start Practicing Now!

I like spending money but I love saving money. Debt sucks and I want it out of my life.

A budget is my holy answer to this, but I always am sure to make wise choices as I go through this journey!

To conclude, here are some extra articles to learn from!

• Step 1: Discover Your Net Worth
• Step 2: Learn Your Credit Score
• Step 3: Make Extra Cash on the Side 
• Step 4: Start a Side Hustle 
• Step 5: Begin Learning About Investing