4 reasons why you find it difficult to stick to your budget.

 Why can't I just stick to my budget?!

I am guessing that you probably ask yourself that question more times than you care to remember. Here are four reasons why you are probably struggling with sticking to your budget.

1.You think it is too complicated. You build your budget and promised yourself to stick to it but that only lasted a few days before the overwhelmed kicked in and threw you off your budget.

My advice: Keep it simple. Allow yourself to make some mistakes as you learn this new way of working with your money. Understand that you will not get it right the first few months but with practice, you will get to the point where you will learn how to master your finances.

2. You show love and appreciation to those you love by buying them things.

Like most people, you probably find it easier to justify buying things for other people than for yourself. This is a common occurrence I see in my practice.

My advice: Make room in your budget for gifts such as birthday and the holidays.

3. You think because you have your expenses listed on an Excel spreadsheet, you have a budget.  A spreadsheet is a tool you can use to build a budget and if used properly, it works well. But if your spreadsheet is just a list of expenses (I can’t tell you the amount of times I see this in my practice) then you don’t have a budget. A budget needs to be balanced, not only in terms of your income VS expenses but also in terms of your various categories e.g. how much of your income are you saving?

My advice: Use a spreadsheet as a tool to help you balance your budget and not just be a place to list all your expenses.

4. You don’t plan for irregular expenses such as buying snow tires or holiday spending, so when these expenses come up you feel that the budgeting process is pointless.

My advice: Estimate how much the irregular expenses would be and divide it into 12 and then include that figure in your monthly budget. E.g if you think you will spend $600 on holiday expenses then divide that into 12. This works out to $50 a month. You then create a category called holidays in your budget and put $50 in it every month.

If you would like help in preparing your budget, please reach out to  me:

[email protected]

PamelaGeorgeFinancialLiteracy.com