How Safe Is Your Budget From Overspending?

The idea of protecting your budget from an overspend isn’t easy and getting this right is important. However, how safe your budget is will depend on how much time and effort you put in, creating a system that is right for you. Although your budget isn’t set in stone, being flexible will enable you to have a better relationship with your budget and keeping the purse strings under some control; how you manage your budget will determine how successful you are at protecting the money that you work hard for. How safe is your budget?

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How Safe Is Your Budget

Knowing how safe your budget is, is a personal opinion, however, the most important step is to have a budget in the first place. It doesn’t matter if your budget is on paper or electronic, as long as it works for you, that is the most important part to remember. Without a working budget, you are not aware of how much you spend and you might easily go over your limits because you are just unsure of the exact figures. This makes it impossible for you to know the answer to the question, ‘how safe is your budget?’

There are things that tempt us away from what we know we should do, which is to stick to our budgets. These include:

• Finding a bargain that you think is far too good to leave behind in the shop. Unfortunately, being able to resist bargains if you haven’t the funds in your budget is difficult, but practicing some of the suggestions might help.
• If you have recently moved home, spending money to get it just right might seem like an obvious solution, but breaking the budget is not an option. However, by taking your time and spending only what you can afford will save you money, after all, you don’t need possessions for happiness.
• If you win some money, spending more than you win to celebrate is not the best idea but it is a popular budget breaking practice.
• If you are looking for a job, you need to look great and have the best accessories, unfortunately, until you have the job you can’t afford the luxuries, so be careful breaking the budget for the perfect job, you might not even get the job.
• Keeping up with the Joneses, this saying is an old but accurate one, often people assume that having everything that other people have is important, however, you don’t know their financial situation, they might have lots of debt.
• A special occasion is always a great way to go overboard with your spending, but it isn’t worth breaking your budget over!
• The same with looking for a new job, starting a new job is an expense that often your budget just isn’t prepared for! While it is important to get the right image for your new job, spending more than you can afford is not going to set you off on the right foot!
• Children or a new baby is something that happens, however, the expenses that you need to consider, feeding and clothing children is not cheap, especially when they can lose so many items in school! How can you lose a pair of shoes or a tie that you must wear? You might wonder, but I have experienced this with all three of my children over the years!

Whilst it is not easy to have plans for every event, and this can mean spending more from your budget than you intended, it’s not the end of the world if you are able to move money from different categories to cover the added expense. However, it will make you question how safe is your budget from overspending.

If you are looking for more information on creating a budget and the steps you need to take to get your money organized then check out this article, It’s Easy To Make A Budget, I will help you start your own budget.

Protecting Your Budget

Making your budget safe, not just from thieves who want to steal your money but from yourself, if you tend to go over your budget regularly. It is important that you look for ways that you can protect your budget from those bargains that you must have, or that special event that you must have a treat for.

All these add up, yet they don’t have to break your budget! You can do more to protect your budget from yourself and an overspend, but you must act now, don’t let temptation in.

How Safe Is Your Budget?

• You must pay with cash; using a credit or debit card, even your phone, has become too easy. You are not touching and dealing with the money you own; it is as though it doesn’t exist. While progress is good in most cases, I personally think that we have created a generation who doesn’t actual have that bond with their money, purely because they just don’t have that hands-on experience.
• Knowing your own limits is important, if you are easily tempted but know you are close to your limits, leave your bank card at home. Don’t go to places that might tempt you to spend money. Take back the control of your financial situation and don’t be tempted to overspend.

It is not about denying you pleasure and spending your money, it is about taking back your control of your finances and the financial decisions that you make on a daily basis, which could potentially affect your life and the amount of money you actually have. If you spend more than you can afford, in the beginning, it’s not too bad, however, if you continue on this route borrowing from your budget to pay for an overspend, you will quickly find that your budget is not working and perhaps in a complete mess.

Protecting your budget isn’t about not using it, but using your money wisely and making sure that when you create your budget, try to cover all possibilities enabling you to have a backup plan if you need to jiggle some of your categories around in your budget.

Therefore, knowing how safe your budget is from an overspend will depend on how well your budget is. There are differences in how people budget their money and if they are keeping on track, those differences don’t matter. It is when those differences start affecting your budget on a regular basis, this is when you should consider looking at and protecting your budget from an unplanned overspend in the future.  ‘How safe is your budget from overspending?’ is an important question you must not ignore!