Managing Your Money – The Power of Budgeting
Budgeting Statistics
- “Approximately 40% of families live off 110% of their incomes.”-The Observer; Jan 12, 2004
- “A recent study by Harris interactive found that 57% of households do not have a budget.”-Harris 2009 Financial Literacy Study
- “61% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 49% last year and 43% in 2007” Baltimore Business Journal
Once you have understood the power of your income as it relates to personal finance and wealth building. The next building block is to learn how to budget. To be honest, this is a tough one because it requires forethought and self discipline. Neither of those traits are particularly common in our society. But discipline and forethought leads to reward. They are not an end in themselves, but stepping stones to a goal.
Here is a great video about Dick and Ricky Hoyt. Although it seems out of place in an investment website, the principle of using self discipline (in their case all the training, in our case the discipline of a budget) in order to reach a higher goal (their case: the triathlon together; our case: whatever goals are motivating you) is supremely relevant to the topic at hand.
Hopefully it will motivate you on how disciplining yourself to live off a budget can help you achieve great goals.
Now that you are motivated, use the following resources to help you build your budget (and stick to it!) Remember, just like Dick had to discipline himself to reach reward, the reward on the other side was worth it. So it will be with budgeting.
Learn How to Budget
- Dave Ramsey, financial guru offers everything you could ever want in the way of advice and resources for budgeting. Here’s a link directly to the budgeting section on his site: http://www.daveramsey.com/articles/article/articleID/the-truth-about-budgeting/category/lifeandmoney_budgeting/
- Here is an excellent blog that gives some practical tips and information: http://easybudgeting.blogspot.com/
- Wise Bread is a community of bloggers committed to living on and providing great budget advice: http://www.wisebread.com/
- Here’s your broken down, step-by-step, put a quarter in it and get a ride budget blog: http://www.personalbudgeting.com/tips/tips.html
- The “Who, What, When, Where, and Why” of budgeting are reviewed on this site: http://www.moneyinstructor.com/doc/budget101.asp
- Why am I budgeting? The cold, hard facts: http://www.sayplanning.com/saygoodcredit/manage-budget.html
Interviews on Budgeting
- This article offers some of Warren Buffett’s top rules on finance to help you avoid dangerous traps: warren buffett article:
- Dave Ramsey lays it out as usual on budgeting and making goals:
- Here’s a little Q&A with Kimberly Palmer author of Generation Earn, she offers her opinion on budgeting, as well as other financial matters