Budgeting Conversations

Good Morning Divas! I hope you all had an enjoyable weekend and have a chance to rest and relax today. I urge you all to remember the reason behind today – Memorial Day – and keep the families and comrades of those that have made the ultimate sacrifice for us, our country and our freedoms.

This past Friday I was able to host my first budgeting get together with an awesome group of divas. My intent is to have this become a bi-monthly or quarterly get together to help keep us on track, learn from one another, and have some much needed girl-time!

One of the topics we discussed were the budgeting pitfalls many of us face and how to overcome them. Many confuse budgeting with balancing their checkbook or just keeping track of how much they spend and where. This is a key step in creating a budget and sticking to one, but it is not the same thing.

Budgeting helps you to spend wisely, pay down debt and plan for large or special events.

Some of the pitfalls we discussed were:

• Negative attitudes or buy-in to importance of having a budget – budgeting is a dirty word for many because it means being more disciplined about your finances and sometimes not being able do the things you really want to. I urge anyone in this situation to focus on the long-term rewards. I sacrificed for a year to pay down debt and improve my credit score so my family could purchase a home. There were some rough moments, but now that we’re in our home they were sacrifices well made.

• Lack of motivation and/or support – whether it be from a spouse, other family members, friends or yourself

• Unrealistic expectations – believing as soon as you create a budget your financial outlook will instantly change

• Not being able to “afford” being on a budget – we discussed how having a budget can actually help you have more in the long run because you can allocate funds for entertainment

• Not knowing where/what you spend your money on – taking the time track your expenses can help you see where you are spending your money and what things you can trim down or eliminate

• Comfortable living paycheck-to-paycheck and/or in constant overdrawn status

It was a great dialogue and I believe we all were able to learn and take something away from it that can help us in our trek to financial independence.

Have any of you successfully overcome any of these budgeting pitfalls or others?