When my husband and I first got married, we set up a budget that we did our best to follow carefully month after month. And it worked to a large degree. We were able to allocate money toward our savings regularly. And knowing how much we were supposed to spend on each expense category helped us stay on track.
But years later, my husband and I got tired of budgeting. It became an annoying task we had to fit into our schedules, and reviewing a budget wasn’t exactly the most exciting thing to do with our downtime.
An even bigger problem, though, was that we started to find budgeting to be super restrictive. I remember there was one month where some unexpected house guests put us over our allocated grocery funds. We wound up having to cut back on leisure to make up the difference, which meant denying ourselves an outing with friends a few days later.
We eventually realized that our system of budgeting wasn’t working. We’ve since replaced it with a new system for saving money and meeting our financial goals that works much better for us.
A vast improvement
Years back, my husband and I ditched budgeting in favor of setting up automatic contributions to our savings — retirement and otherwise. It’s been a game-changer.
Now we don’t worry about whether our supermarket tab for the month was $814 instead of $800 (not that either number is accurate anymore thanks to inflation). We also don’t stress if a last-minute invite to do something means spending $320 one month on leisure instead of $250.
Our current system sends money out of our checking account and into our designated savings accounts each month before we’re able to touch it. That way, we know those accounts are being funded, and we know that we’re free to spend the rest of our paychecks from that point onward.
This takes the pressure off. It doesn’t matter what we spend on during the month as long our total spending doesn’t exceed the amount we’ve earned. Budgeting did allow us to get to the same place — only in a much more aggravating and time-consuming manner.
Do what works for you
If you’re someone who doesn’t mind following a budget and likes to know exactly what you’re spending on various expenses, then by all means, keep running those numbers. It’s not like budgeting is a bad thing for your finances.
Also, the good thing about budgeting is that it can be an eye-opener. You might look at your budget and realize you’re spending way too much on cable, for example, given how little you use it. That might prompt you to cancel and free up that money for other expenses.
But forcing yourself to follow a budget may not be necessary if you’re willing to automate your savings instead. So if you hate budgeting like I do, don’t put yourself through that torture. Instead, take back your time and mental well-being by automating your savings and calling it a day. Chances are, you’ll be much happier with that sort of system in place.
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