In today’s world, I think a lot of people including myself are worried about money, careers and budgeting. This can cause huge stress and pressure on families and individuals.
I myself like a plan and I like to know what is happening at what time (I am a parent, if you couldn’t tell already)
I am always on the lookout for new ways to make my money go further, and budgeting seems to be the biggest way I have achieved this, especially when a tight month hits and I need to feed my family and pay priority bills on time. Budgeting has helped me develop a plan for each month.
What is budgeting?
In simple terms, budgeting is allocating funds to different needs or wants so for example, you may have a budget of £500 for this month and you may go grocery shopping every Friday so you may allocate £400 to groceries so this leaves you with £100 and this may be used for savings so you allocate £100 to savings.
Let’s take a look at a quick example budget:
Income : £1000
Spending:
Groceries – £400
Bills – £300
Savings – £150
leftover: £150
Budgeting gives you the chance to arrange your money before you go spending, so you can do your best to stick to the budgets you have set, which in turn makes your money easier to manage and requires less planning to prevent the unexpected bill from arising.
How budgeting helped me worry less
Before I discovered how to budget, a lot of my time was spent at the end of the month trying to find the last few pound to buy essentials or wondering why I’m so short on funds for the month again.
This caused my anxiety to go through the roof and really did impact my life, especially with my kids, because my mood was affecting them and vice versa.
Every single month was the same story I get paid, go shopping, pay bills and have nothing left over and I never knew why. Where was all my money going?
Then I started budgeting and developing a plan for my fund each and every month, and this not only enabled me to manage my money better but I could also see where I was overspending so one example was my broadband which was suddenly over £70 a month so I decided to contact my supplier and save £30 per month which I could allocate back into my budget for something else more important.
The first couple of months I didn’t really notice a difference but after this I wasn’t struggling as much each month and I had some funds leftover and this really did help me manage my finances and anxiety a lot better because I wasn’t worrying as much.
My mood improved and obviously I did have the odd downfall but that’s life but I know that setting a budget and a plan is what helped me incredibly.
Tool to help you budget
Are you ready to build your own budget?
There are plenty of tools available that can help you build an effective budget depending on your income, outgoings and savings requirements.
Free Budget creator by Money helper is an amazing tool which enables you to create a budget based on your own personal or household income and outgoing:
https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/everyday-money/budgeting/budget-planner
Of course, you can also go ahead with the old-fashioned pen and paper if you prefer The main point here is to get an overview of your remaining funds at the end of each week or month, to give you an idea of your overall financial situation.
In turn it will give you a bit more peace of mind and enable you to be calmer and not worry as much.
Final thoughts
This has been my first post on my blog and hopefully it will be the first of many. My main aim is to enable my past experiences to help others, whether that be improving your mental health or outlook on life or saving those few extra pounds to treat yourself to something nice.
I hope you enjoyed this post and it has helped you build an effective budget tailored to your household and we can’t always stick to a budget especially if you’re like me and have children and a car because things just popup and that extra expense isn’t welcomed but with a budget hopefully you have a bit extra to expect the unexpected.
Keep a lookout on my blog as I will be posting new content every Wednesday.
Oh yes, before I go! If you would like me to write about something specifically, feel free to comment or use our contact form, and I will be sure to reply as soon as I can.
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