3 Tips for Budgeting Success
Tuesday May 6, 2008
The process of creating a budget is daunting at first, but that is actually the easiest part. Maintaining and staying true to your budget for any period of time is the hard part. While it can be difficult to stick to your budget, there are a few things you can do to improve your chances for success:
- Maintain a positive attitude
- Stay motivated
- Set realistic expectations
Comments
Great comments on maintaining a budget. You are so right when you say “making a budget is the easy part…keeping it is the difficult part”. Great post.
I think that planning a budget takes quite a bit of time and effort and when people find they they are slipping in their budget goals, they usually get discouraged and give up.
Setting budget goals is the same as setting any other kinds of goals and people should include some form of flexibility in their plan to cater for unexpected surprises. Overall, a plan is meant to keep you focused and motivated, not to stress the individual.
Actually, maxing out your loans is in general a better practice because the interest and repayment options are so low. You should just take your overage that you don’t need and place in in a CD, not the market because the long term investment needed for the market will not be adventitious for this type of practice. Essentially, you live in a country that does not value your education enough to fund it and you need to be prepared for the job market after school. You can use your student loan money to help you after school until you get your feet on the ground, maybe even buy a house if you save correctly. It is one of the only free bees in life you will get, and if you don’t “come from money” it is one of your only opportunities to get a jump start and provide you with the chances that the more fortunate do have. So in short, yes, even if it sounds counter-intuitive, I am advocating not listening to the advice in this article.