Here’s Some Tips on How To Stay Budget Conscious In The Present and Future

When dealing with money, one of the hardest things to do is staying aware of your monthly, weekly or annual budget. In today’s blog, we want to help you get better at remaining budget-conscious with these five tips!

Let’s not waste any more time. Here are our tips: 

1. Keep A Low Credit Card Limit

Be careful not to set too high of a credit card limit, as this may give you a desire to spend more money during a given budget period. Instead, keeping a low credit limit will conversely allow and train you to minimize non-essential spending as a way of staying true to the budget that you set at the beginning of the year/month/week.   

2. Put Pen To Paper

When we simply tell ourselves we are going to do something, we are actually much less likely to do it than if we write it down on paper. Writing something down on paper, in an odd psychological way, provides the human brain with something more solid to adhere to. Ideas become more real or firm when they are written down on paper, which will make it more likely that you in fact stick to the budget you have laid out for yourself in any given period of time (month, year etc.) 

3. Coupons Are Your Best Friend

Utilizing coupons and other money-saving techniques (like comparison-shopping) will help you stay conscious of your budget by allowing you to create extra space in your budget that you might be able to add to your budget buffer for the month/week/year etc (we will discuss more about buffers later on). You can’t plan for how many coupons you will take advantage of over a given time period so please resist the urge to account for potential coupons and savings in your budget as a means of giving yourself more money for leisurely activities but using these money-savers when they do become available is a great way to stay on top of your budget.

4. Budget To Zero

When finalizing your budget on paper to make sure you have something in writing to stick to, you will want to budget so that your total income for the time period minus your total expenses for the same period equals zero. This strategy is one that benefits the budget-aware consumer by providing no opportunity for the individual to go over their budget. If you budget to zero, you are allocating every dollar you have for that period, disabling the possibility that you go over your budget and run into problems for the next time period.  

5. Include A Buffer In Your Budget

Even further to the idea of putting pen to paper and writing down a firm budget, including a buffer in your budget for unexpected expenses can be beneficial because it allows you to be prepared for any potential “curve balls” that come your way over a given time period. Really, in that way, you really won’t encounter any curve balls because are they really even curveballs if you’ve planned for them? A buffer included within your budget can give you an extra level of preparedness and when it comes to your money, you can never be too prepared for how to navigate your expenses and finances over time.

Let us know in the comments below if these tips are things you are already using or if you plan to use them in your own personal life going forward. We love it when we hear that our tips and tricks surrounding different finance topics actually help the people that read our blog, whether they use the specific tips we share or our tips help improve their financial literacy on the whole. 

In the interest of further helping our audience develop their financial literacy skills, we also want to remind you that we offer many youth financial literacy programs to children all over the world, including our nationally-acclaimed and internationally-recognized personal finance programs. 

Our programs in this area, designed for children in grades one all the way to grade twelve, cover topics from the basics and history of money to the stock market and global finance. We trust and believe that these classes and courses will give you a way to help your child get on a path to superior financial literacy both in the present and in the future! 

Check them out today on our website and sign your child up ASAP! We know you won’t regret it!