I’ve written a lot over the years on how to make a monthly budget. It’s really been important to me because creating and successfully living on a budget turned our life around. My wife and I would not be where we are financially had we not admitted the problem and took the time to learn how to budget.
So I’ve decided to pull all my knowledge about doing a monthly budget into one post. And I’ll tell you right now, it’s going to be a long one. But it’s also going to be really helpful. If you are new to budgeting, struggling with budgeting or a veteran at budgeting, you’ll learn something from this post that you can apply right away.
To help with organization, I’ve divided the post into several segments. Here is what you can expect to find:
What are budgets?- The real reason you need a monthly budget
- Why people resist budgets
- The one tip that started our success
- The basics expenses of a monthly budget
- What percentage to spend in each budget category
- How to make your monthly budget zero-based
- What to do with the left over budget money
- Why your monthly budget isn’t working
- Three helpful strategies for spending
- Budgeting resources that work
With that as our outline, let’s get started.
It’s is a good thing that businesses and travel have started to open back up. People are staring to get their lives back. Life is beginning to return to pre-Covid19 normal as vaccines are rolling out. With all this taking place, it brings additional incentive to look at your finances and see if you need to make adjustments to stay on track toward your goals. There is no better time than now to get started. 
It didn’t deter us however from trying again…and again…and again. Interestingly enough, we found that after several months of trial and error, certain expenses always drifted to the surface first. It was apparent that we were drawn to some spending categories more readily than others because they represented fundamental needs for our family each month.
The only thing helping me shed my feelings of stupidity is the shopping experience this app provides. It’s that amazing!
At some point it dawned on us that we needed some clarity about the process. We needed to narrow the field and focus on certain priorities in the budget. By doing that, it became obvious what areas of the budget we needed to focus on first.
The first attempt we made at budgeting years ago was a nightmare. Our intentions were good and what we did seemed logical at the time. However, after a few short months it became apparent we could not put together successful budgets.
Three weeks ago I’m standing in Target crossing off the list Christmas gifts we had already purchased. My wife, who had been looking at some kid clothes, comes up to me and says, “I’m having so much fun Christmas shopping this year!”