(Almost) Pain-Free Budgeting

Do you have plenty of cash, know exactly where every penny goes and never have stress paying bills? If so, you may want to skip this post, because you’re either too rich or too smart to need it.

For the rest of us, making–and sticking to–a meaningful budget can be an essential tool for ensuring that our money gets used where it’s needed. Even if you’re in the fortunate situation of having plenty of income, the homework involved in creating a budget can be instructive. You may find that you’re spending more than you wish (or need) on things like groceries, entertainment or eating out.

Taking the time to sit down and draw up a budget used to be pure drudgery enlivened only by the reality of staring your unwise spending habits in the face. In fact, one of the biggest obstacles to creating a meaningful budget is that most of us would rather not know how we really spend our money–because we know that to follow a budget requires sacrifices we may not be willing to make.

But have courage. With the great (and often free) online tools available today, budgeting can be as easy as a few clicks and setting some basic goals. As for the sacrifice part, a realistic budget will help you find the areas in your spending where you can afford (and are willing) to sacrifice more–or less–according to your desired goals.

If you’re not sure where to start, use a free tool like FinanceWorks to help you take a quick snapshot of where you’re income is going. Simply categorizing your expenses is often motivation enough to hunker-down and make a meaningful budget. And you can use the goal setting features of a program like FinanceWorks to take your budget to the next level. These automatic features will help you monitor and adjust your spending, and reach your goals more easily than programs that only allow you to categorize expenses.