“Real life on a budget”….hmmmm…what the heck does this mean exactly?
For me, when it comes to managing our money well, it’s all about making our money work in our real life. But, let’s be honest for a second. It’s harrrrrrdddd to manage money well – and some seasons in life it is especially hard.
Last week, I posted on social media an older blog post about the importance of saving money. Well, someone commented that they would have liked my blog post better if I had “included tips like couponing, meal planning, and DIY stuff”.
Now,I don’t necessarily disagree with this commenter, but I don’t really agree either.
Yes, the blog post could be reworked to include those topics, but the point of the article wasn’t to reiterate the same old savings tips we’ve all heard a dozen times – the point was to stress how important it is to save money and why it is that you want to save money in the first place.
Without realizing it, this commenter brought to light one of the biggest issues that most of us face when it comes to managing our money well – we fail to put our knowledge into action.
Here’s what I mean.
Most of us know all the various little money saving tips about couponing, meal planning, and even working a part-time job, etc. but we fail to take this advice. We’ll print off a budget printable, fill it out and feel like we just conquered Mount Everest. However, we fail to stick to the budget which then makes us feel defeated and like the budgeting advice and tips we already know are completely useless to us, so we take to Google and try to find someone else’s advice.
And thus, the endless cycle begins of taking more and more advice but never really putting it into action begins.
The answer to managing your money well doesn’t lie in thousands of Google searches – it lies in the action that we take.
“Execution trumps knowledge every day of the week.” – Tony Robbins
I love this quote from Tony Robbins because it is soooo true. Most of the time, we have all the information we need in order to manage our money well, but we fail to take the actions necessary to do it. We keep repeating this same cycle over and over again feeling like we’re never going to gain control.
I want to encourage you to avoid this cycle and to stop searching for more knowledge and start putting the knowledge you do have in practice.
Ask yourself,
- Do you have an emergency fund of at least a $1,000?
- Do you have budget for this month and if so, how well are you sticking to it?
- Do you know how much money you have sitting in all of your money accounts (checking, savings, retirement, etc.)?
- What is a big money goal you’d like to meet within the next year?
So why are these questions important?
Well, for one, if you don’t have at least a starter emergency fund in place it’ll make getting ahead financially extremely difficult and chances are, you already know that.
Same with budgeting – it’s not enough to just create the budget, you gotta stick to it too. But you knew that one too.
And chances are, you can figure out why it’s not a good thing if you don’t know how much your net worth is and you can even probably determine why it’s important to have a money goal.
So what is an action that you’ve been putting off? I’m not judging – Lord knows I’ve got some progress and things I need to be working on. You’re not alone in this “failure to launch” realm – there are many of us here. BUT, none of us need to stay here.
So, pick your action that you’ve been putting off and let’s get it done this week! Seriously, let’s shelf the reasons why we can’t do something and just take action.
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I always feel that you are talking right to me.
Last week I walked off my primary job…long story. But I had a second job to fall back on. The problem is I lost $1800-2000 of income from day job and about $800 from second job. Now I only have $1200 coming in. I have readjusted my budget and tighten my belt.
For the first time in almost a year I paid a full tithe on my smaller income. Doubting Thomas was definitely fighting with my decision, new goal.
Thank you for sharing your story.
Melissa
I need to take many of these actions, but probably first and foremost, I need to make a budget and track our spending so I know exactly where our money is going. I know if I don’t do this, we’ll never make progress on our student loans.
My struggle is finding a way to stick to the budget with my husband, I’m just ready to seperate our money I’m so frustrated, any tips for people married to someone who doesn’t want to track their expenses or curb their spending?
Hi Angela! My husband was like this and can still be like this sometimes. It can be hard, and there’s not a “one size fits all” approach to working this out, but in my experience, data helps. If you can, tally up exactly how much has been spent over the past 30 – 60 days and break it all out into categories. Then do the math and subtract those numbers from the income that was earned. Show all of this to your husband in a way that isn’t attacking but in a way that’s open to figuring it out. Make sure that you avoid talking about what he can do to help and instead just ask for his feedback. This isn’t a miracle solution but this usually gets the conversation going and the “seed planted” that something has to change. I hope this helps darlin’!