Write about your approach to budgeting.
As I stood watering the plants in my little garden at 7 in the morning, I imagined the beautiful greens and colours of flowers that would emerge out of the hard work. There is a distinct satisfaction in looking after plants in a systemised manner, researching how you can help your plants grow better and healthier and then eventually as time rolls on you watch them grow.
The water flowing out of the pipe spread on the soil and I watched it happen. The notification tone of my phone reached my ears, it was a message from my bank notifying me of my credit card statement which contained the amount I had to pay. I paid it immediately, as is the habit.
I never spend the money I don’t have; I have just simply replaced my debit card with the credit card because of the additional perks it offers. Although many have warned me that credit cards can be a bad idea and I have seen people sitting at the bad side of it, but everything can be managed well before the red line through budgeting.
What exactly is budgeting? Budgeting refers to developing your own system of managing your monetary expenditures over a certain period of time. We use budgeting to divide our money and plan beforehand as to how much money we require for what expenditures. There are expected as well as unexpected expenditures and most of us do carry that little bit of itching guilt of having spent a little too much on something or the other, which didn’t seem like the brightest idea it had seemed before.
How does budgeting help us? Have you ever had that feeling at the end of the month where you couldn’t figure out where all the money went? This is where budgeting comes in, it can allow one to keep track of almost everything on which he/she spent his/her hard-earned money. Having a certain answer is any day better than an assumption, that is why we refer to the internet more and more in this day and age.
What do we truly want from money? Financial stability in order to future proof our basic as well as urgent needs and budgeting helps here by allowing you to put aside some of your money for future purpose in any form, it can be investment or simply keeping it aside and forgetting it (not literally).
We all know how much we earn, after all our banks do show the exact figure of what comes in at the end of the month or over a certain period of time. But how much are we truly aware of when the water is about to break through the wall? There are people who end up with nothing to save at all by the end, and that’s because they skipped budgeting. True, we cannot anticipate all expenditures but we can anticipate a large part of it and also be prepared for the unexpected ones so that life does not become difficult as the month starts approaching its end.
In the end what is my take on managing money? I love experiencing life and no matter how much I dislike it, money is required to facilitate those experiences and it also gives confidence and freedom of mind to look forward to the next thing without having to go through the worry of going overboard. Planning expenditures and saving can make life a lot smoother than what one can think of.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 
One response to “Budgeting your Way Through Life”
Perhaps having money leads to certain experiences as does not having money…
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