I don’t have time to budget!

Let’s face it simply saying the word budget invokes feelings of restriction, too much time and hard work or even boredom. Few of us want to look at what we’re spending, crunch some numbers on a spreadsheet or think about what we might need to spend our money on next week let alone next year.

Why is this? Why does the idea of budgeting send us in a spiral?

These reactions are usually a defence mechanism; Budgeting takes mental effort and might take us where we don’t want to go.

Do any of these feel familiar?

• Feels restrictive – I won’t be able to …
• Forces you to face up to where your money’s been going
• Too complicated
• Don’t believe in them – so there’s no need for all that effort
• Don’t have enough money to need budgeting
• Can’t predict the future anyway so why bother
• I’ve tried before but then I just give up

It is true that creating a budget initially will take time, but the payoff is most certainly worth it. Deciding how much time to set aside for budgeting makes all the difference to how successful it will become.

In the past I’ve spent hours going through every penny I’ve spent and I’ve created the budget to beat all budgets. Unfortunately dedicating so much time and effort doesn’t mean it will have the desired outcome.

How much time should we dedicate to budgeting?

Before deciding to create a budget it’s useful to be prepared.

• Initial outlay might take some time
• Good opportunity to get all your documents in one place
• Is half an hour a month really too much?
• Easier now we don’t have to wait for a statement to be sent each month
• Break it down into smaller more regular chunks

At the end of the day, seeing on paper or a spreadsheet exactly where our money has been haemorrhaging from our accounts is enough to shock the system into managing it more carefully from now on.

… but, and here’s the killer, if the budget is too complex and restrictive, chances are you will not stick to it.

Simply knowing how much needs to be set aside for NEEDs, (housing, bills and groceries) WANTS (subscriptions, nights out, and hobbies) and FUTURE (savings, investments) might just be enough.