I threatened to do a whole week on budgeting at the end of last week. I was joking at the time as I imagine it to be very dry and boring. However, the more that I think about it, the more it seems like an interesting challenge. Is it at all possible to make budgeting fun? The act of creating and sticking to a budget is hard. However, there are rewards for a well-designed budget… whether it’s J.D.’s new-to-him Mini Cooper or my goal of retiring in less than 10 years (so that I can join my wife who will be eligible to retire from the military).
In the next few days (hopefully starting today), I’ll write about several methods of budgeting including a variety of online personal finance software (there’s a subtle hint there), some physical systems (ones that actually take up a small amount of counter space), some budgeting books, some desktop software, and some mental budgeting tricks. I’ll probably run out of days to get to all that I want, so I might resort to a rare two posts a day.
I’m not going to give away my favorite budgeting plan until the end of the week. There was another hint there, but that is actually a #2 option which augments my #1 budgeting trick. I think in the end, you’ll find a number of options available. It will be up to you to figure out which one suits you best.
A week on budgeting? This should be interesting :)
Does one of the systems include using Cheerios? I have always wanted a budgeting system that involved breakfast food. So at the end of the week you could have a small snack to reward yourself :)
How about a mention of cereal bowls? Close enough?