Budgeting: The Financial Equivalent of Counting Calories

Mention budgeting as a money management tool and you tend to get the same reaction as you do when mentioning counting calories (or carbs or fat grams) to lose weight. Ugh! Most of us would like to have control of our financial house and be at a healthy weight as well. We know we “should” budget and we “should” be conscious of what we eat. However, we avoid it and then feel guilty for this avoidance.

It isn’t rocket science really. If you eat too much or spend too much, you gain weight or court financial problems. Weight management requires consciousness of what we are actually doing. Financial management, likewise, requires that we have a sense of our current spending patterns. Do you know how much you are spending for necessities and for extras? Do you know where the money drains are each month? Are there different choices you could make and still have a good life?

The problem with going unconscious is that all of a sudden you are faced with a huge and uncomfortable task—needing to lose lots of weight or having to fight off credit card debt or bankruptcy. Neither is very much fun.

Wouldn’t it feel great to feel more in control? The secret to doing this is having a tracking system that tells you what you are currently doing. One of the most valuable things I ever did, as a poor struggling college student, was to keep a small notebook where I tracked all daily expenses for a month or so. It made it very clear what had to change to avoid financial disaster. Similarly, when I decide it’s time to shed some pounds, it rarely works until I get religious about tracking daily food intake for a period of time. The good news is that you don’t have to necessarily do this forever—only until you get a sense of what behaviors (spending or eating) you need to tweak.

Judy Davidson