Review and Improve Your Budget With These Three Questions
From time to time, you probably flip through your toilets and weed out a bunch of useless things . That which doesn’t matter to you anymore; things that don’t serve a big purpose. It may be helpful to do the same with your finances. You can overestimate and clear your budget by asking a few simple questions.
If you are not too rich and cannot afford whatever you want, you want to spend your money wisely, which means spend it on what matters most to you . It’s important to revisit your budget from time to time to make sure you are getting the most out of your spending.
Take a look at all of your transactions over the past couple of months. From there, financial expert Carl Richards will tell you how to get rid of unnecessary expenses. Review all of your discretionary transactions and ask yourself the following questions:
1. Are these expenses in line with [your] values?
2.What meaning does this agree with?
3. Is there a substitute that could be cheaper?
These questions will help you understand what you are really getting from your expenses. For example, I found myself spending quite a lot on restaurants. It is mainly food with friends, and the value that comes with it is spending time with those friends. Of course, this is important to me, but there are many substitutes that can cost less. I could invite them to dinner. We could go to happy hour instead. We could have arranged the game night however we like.
It’s not that I ‘ll never go out to eat out with friends. But these questions help me understand the true value of these costs, and then find a cheaper way to get the exact same value. It can also help you focus on the areas that are most important to you. As financial columnist Tiffany Alishe says, spend your money on love, not sympathy.
All of these can be tricky to do if you don’t have a lot of discretionary spending to start with, but it’s worth considering when you’re clearing your budget.
If you’re sharing a budget with your spouse or partner, you probably want to go through it together and see how your spending aligns with your shared values. The next time you need to revise your budget, try and skip to the full post for more information.
Budgeting Based on Your Values | New York Times