Your path to financial freedom begins here!
How often do you find yourself asking “where did my money go?!!” before the month ends? Well… how often did you try being on a ehm..ehmm.. budget? Yeah yeah we know.. It’s such a triggering word - no one really likes it. Did you know that it’s origin is the french word “bougette” - basically a 15th century fanny pack! It wasn’t until the 1880s that “to budget” started being used as a verb referring to money management.
Today in 2024, budgeting has come to have a clear definition and framework, a variety of models to match people with different personalities and lifestyles, as well as several apps and software that make the process easier. Yet, the stigma still remains! Fact is, as long as we are uncomfortable with the term itself, we will always feel a burden associated with the activity of budgeting.
That-very-annoying “budget” is simply an estimation of how much money you make against how much you spend. You take these learnings and then start making decisions, depending on whether you want to simply breakeven, save or invest. You never have to get it 100% right from the first time, as a matter of fact, you keep making changes as you go - because the more you commit to it, the more you learn about your spending habits and needs - and the more you learn, the more you improve.
To budget, you must first track your expenses. Many people fear what knowledge they’ll come to by tracking. So first, you need to shift your mindset from the guilt and self-shaming of “I know I’ll turn out to be overspending on silly useless things” towards curiosity - detective mode on!
Just as you budget your money you can budget your junk food intake, screen time or any other bad habit that adversely affects your health or hinders your goals. We fund all these bad habits with our money, so technically tracking means we’ll get a better understanding of how much we’re spending on them. So track your money with a mindset to improve your lifestyle and divest in the areas that go against your goals.
Budgeting does NOT mean to spend as little as possible, it means to spend with knowledge and awareness. It also means you’re more likely to be healthy, debt-free, saving and perhaps even investing those savings - but these are topics we’ll cover later in more detail.
At Flash our goal is to “support our society’s financial wellbeing, one person at a time.”
If you found this helpful and you feel like giving budgeting a go, here are upcoming topics that Flash will be covering to ease you into the process of managing your money better. Download the app and we’ll notify you when the next blog post is out, or follow our instagram page for updates.
Topics to be covered in this blog post series:
⚪️ Budgeting 101 - Where did my money go?
⚪️ Tracking for beginners
⚪️ Is budgeting really that hard?
⚪️ Common mistakes we make when budgeting
⚪️ How to budget successfully
⚪️ How to stay disciplined and motivated - it’s easy!
⚪️ Impulse buying - the enemy!
⚪️ Finding the right accountability partner - when you know you know!
⚪️ Budgeting models and what best suit your lifestyle - let’s go!