Tag: Budget

Rich outside, paycheck-to-paycheck in reality

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From a very young age, I knew that money was necessary. When I was making wishes as a kid, I wished for money (or a magic wand which is the same in this age). I was also lucky to be born into a family of professional engineers who believe that a good education and hard work will pay you.

My initial view of money was: get much of it, and everything will fall into place. So, I followed the classical career path: working hard during my studies, working hard after I graduated, sacrificing a lot, and finally starting to get results. My first real job was in the 60th percentile of the market (not a bad start!), and then I basically doubled my income every three years, which brought me to the infamous 1% of the population in a reasonable amount of time.

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Budgeting is intimidating

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I tried to start budgeting three times and failed. Three times! Luckily, I am very stubborn, and if I fail in something, I persist if not to the mastery, to at least of the “feel confident” point. So now I budget, and it is part of my everyday life.

I must confess it is extremely rewarding. It brings a sense of ownership and control over my money. It also dramatically lowers anxiety associated with “what if […], and I don’t have enough money”. It also helps you to live beyond your means, save money… The rewards are countless.

But… Before I came to the point where I am now, I struggled. And now participating in the budgeting communities, I still see people are intimidated by budgeting. It feels so overwhelming in the beginning! In this post, I try to express tips that I would have given to me in the past, during my initial 3 unsuccessful attempts.

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Budget in plain English (…and in pictures)

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For some the budgeting looks intimidating. It looked so for me before I started. To tell the truth, it was so intimidating, that I postponed my decision to start a budget for almost 20 years.

Now I face a new challenge: I am trying to bring my knowledge to my 12-years old daughter. I literally have a 5-10 minutes span of attention to bring all the wisdom I acquired. That is how I created the explanation. Hopefully, it will be useful for others, too.

All things are difficult before they are easy.

Thomas Fuller
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I love to pay my bills

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I really do love to pay my bills. I like to seat, go through my routine: fill the amount and push the “Pay” button on my computer or sign a check, seal an envelope, and drop it to the postbox. I love the feeling of the done deal, feeling that I don’t owe anything and freedom coming from it. Easy-breezy

I must confess, only a year ago it was a mess. I was anxious, I was sweating and try to postpone the moment of payment as long as possible. When I finally force myself to seat and start to sort out the bills, I was already confused: what should I pay, what if I don’t have enough money, what if I forget something. Moreover, after this torching process, my seemingly significant checking account was heading to zero, and this fact set me into stress again. I always lived from paycheck to paycheck.

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Subscriptions: taking the hidden spending under control

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I guess you, as I wonder where the money went. When such a question pops up we naturally start budgeting and recall big categories: dining out, groceries, gas, rent/mortgage…

But there are also a lot of small expenses we usually don’t pay attention to subscriptions. And these small payments are the main reason why direct budgeting doesn’t work: they sum up too quickly ruining any planning.

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