Use cash - not checks or credit cards - to help you in budgeting money.
Budgeting your income isn’t really anyone’s idea of a good time, but it’s an essential task for a responsible adult who has a family to support.
"One way to solve the traffic problems of this country is to pass a law that only paid-for cars be allowed to use the highways.”
- Will Rogers |
What can you do to get budgeting help to make the budgeting process more appealing? Here are some ideas.
A hundred years ago, budgeting money was much easier because everything was transacted in cash. People would take all their money at the beginning of the month and parcel it out to different envelopes, each corresponding with one of your regular expenses.
In fact, a lot of folks still use the time-tested “envelope budgeting system” now, but since so many transactions are done electronically - online or with credit and debit cards - it’s harder than ever to limit your expenditures to only using cash.
You’ll definitely spend less if you learn to fully appreciate the power of cash. As much as possible, convert your income into cold-hard-cash and spend it that way.
You might not think twice about spending $50 on clothes you don’t really need when you’re paying with a plastic card. However, when paying in actual cash - "green backs" - being laid down on the counter, you’ll experience a greater sense of pain.
On the lighter side, there’s the satisfaction you experience when you've saved up for something and paying CASH for it. Now you experience the joy tht comes from the realization, "Wow! I’ve really accomplished something here. Something I saved up for. I EARNED this.”
So it will help you in budgeting money if you can operate on a cash only system as much as possible. You’ll think twice about every purchase, and you’ll start to appreciate money as a tangible thing again.
Working with cash will also help you when it comes to storing money away for a rainy day, as part of your overall personal finance program. In our modern world, people tend not to carry a lot of cash.
Even people who have a large net worth don’t literally “have” the money. Rather, it’s in the form of stocks, bonds, or savings accounts, not cold, hard bills that they can see and touch.
Using cash for budgeting money will bring you back to the “good old days,” when people were more respectful of their money and treated it more carefully. Using an envelope budget system is also a powerful tool to get you on the right track.
Increasing your awareness of the true value of a dollar will help you get out of credit card debt and become a smarter consumer.
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"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."
- Woody Allen |
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