One thing that often destroyed, and did my head in when I was budgeting, was the fact that there are not 4 weeks in every month. When I had all of my expenses laid out in front of me, and then tallied them up into my budget, it just never worked... As I was always paid monthly.
Strangely, every job I had growing up I was paid monthly so I was always a monthly Girl. I always knew the amount of pay I was going to get, so that was where I started. In those days, a lot of my bills and expenses were monthly anyway until I became more homely with gas bills, electricity bills, water bills, and more...
However! Being a young girl who generally only went out on a weekend, I used to count the weekends. No, I am not kidding. Realising there was often 5 weekends that fell between my monthly pay cycles was devastating, as you can imagine. Each month, I would either divide the monthly amount by four, or sometimes five.
Do you know how much of a difference that made, to my going out money, etc?? I would take my monthly pay, account for all of the monthly deductions, and pay them accordingly... then, the “going out money” had to be either split four ways or even worse; 5 ways! I can distinctly remember the going out money being one hundred pounds (I am English remember). A lot of the months were 4 weekends long and so I had twenty five pounds to spend. Happy Days.
When the month of five weekends came along, the going out money reduced to twenty pounds per weekend. I used to fit a LOT of spending in with that twenty or twenty five pounds and Sod’s Law always ended up that the busier weekends – where I needed more money – were on the five weekends in a month. It was a nightmare. I even used to attempt to pretend that there were five weekends in every month – because I thought that might be easier - and then there would be excess cash, but that got way too complicated.
In the end, the end of the month came around quickly and I always seemed to spend all of my money, no matter how many weekends there were in it. Damn it. This Budgeting malarkey was not much fun when I was growing up and attempting to pay for all of my commitments made it worse. Adulting was hard! How did the adults cope?
Once I moved out of home all of those homely obligatory expenses came into play - gas, electric, phone (landline in those days!)... And, worse when I became a home owner with a mortgage, rates, council, and more. Not to mention all of the expenses that I had gotten used to when I lived “at home”; petrol, car loan, going out money, clothes, etc...
As I got older, the frequencies became more varied. I was attempting to pay for things, quarterly, monthly, and annually. It was a flipping nightmare to keep up. I kept having to go back to my monthly pay to attempt to squeeze it all in. It never used to fit in. I was forever working out an annual amount for something, and then dividing it by twelve so that I could account for it in my monthly budget… Sometimes, there was not enough to cover it all (even with all my side hustles) and so something had to give. Often my clothes money, or even worse, my going out money. If only there was a system that did all of the predicting for you. It would have saved me a lot of time, energy, and frustration.
If I only knew then, what I know now…
Would A Monthly Bills Tracker Help?
My how technology has changed and now budgeting is such an old way of managing money. If my story above sounds like you then the solution is easy... It's a Spending Plan. Essentially a spending plan helps to manage your money going into the future with software that will tell you when a bill is coming rather than that nasty surprise in your mailbox (or inbox).
But the really beautiful thing about this software is it can track bills not only monthly, but yearly, quarterly, fortnightly... whatever you set it to do. That way you will never be surprised...
And you can even input your income, be it weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc... To which the software will even tell you which week in the future you might be short on money... How great is that because you can adjust weeks in advance and avoid the potential shortfall week altogether.
Let's Use Your Monthly Electricity Bills As An Example
So out of all of your bills, you most likely have an electricity bill and as prices keep going up, they always seem to be a surprise. Now you might get your bill less frequently than monthly, but it's a good example.
Simply go into the Spending Plan software, input the amount you paid in the past, the frequency, and ta-da... the software will auto calculate when the next one is, tally it up with your other regular expenses, and show you if you have a shortfall week coming.
Now that may appear simple, but once you have entered in all of your expenses, how frequent they are, and your income, it is just a matter of spending 10mins a week adjusting it. Plus you can even start saving as it helps to manage your long-term finances. Up to 10 years in fact.
We Can Help
If you want a Spending Plan and access to the marvelous software that can help you, then please contact us to find out more. We will create a personalised, detailed Spending Plan, just for you!
You won’t regret it! You can book in here for a no-obligation chat.
For more information, check out www.spendingmadeeasy.com.au The testimonials speak for themselves…
