How I Started Monthly Budgeting (& how u can too!)

If you’re not someone that has lived off a budget your entire life and are struggling to get started with one, this is how I eased myself into budgeting a few years ago.

1️⃣ First, I started just by deciding on a monthly spending limit for the next 3 months. The easiest way for me to do this was to decide that I was going to save approx. 20% of my salary and everything else was for expenses, which was $1,600. I also stopped using credit cards and funneled all expenses through ONE debit card so it was easy to track. These first 3 months were difficult and I always ended up nearly emptying my debit card three quarters into the month and had no idea where my money was going.

2️⃣ For the next 3 months, I continued with the spending limit, but added on expense tracking. I manually tracked every single one of my expenses and this gave me so much insight into where I was spending most and where I desperately needed to cut down on.

3️⃣ After half a year later, I was ready to start creating buckets of expense categories, such as transportation, food, shopping, etc. and set spending limits on each of them. The 3 months of tracking was essential for helping me decide on sustainable and achievable caps. If I had gone into it blind, I wouldn’t have understood my own spending habits, much less know how much to set as a limit.

Anyway, starting slowly and building up to a more comprehensive budget was how it stuck for me and I’ve been budgeting this way ever since! 😃

#finance #budgeting #personalfinance #lemon8finance