Your extremely boring, difficult and useful friend

Budgeting has a terrible image problem, when actually it should be the thing that helps us achieve our big goals. To save up that house deposit. To go on that trip to Paris. To go out for brunch with your friends. You can have any of those things. But probably not all of them at once. And that’s why we need a budget.

A budget, done well, forces you to prioritise the things that make you happiest. The best way for many people to start is to keep a money diary of everything they spend for a week.

Beside each spend, you note down how much you genuinely needed that thing (as in, to stay breathing), and also how happy it made you. Every time I force myself to do this, I’m surprised at how much is on the list that is neither needed, or making me happy.

Once this is down on paper in front of you, it forces you to confront whether you still want to keep all of this in your life.

I don’t care about having a new phone, pair of shoes, or a drink with people I don’t like that much, when I realise that’s what’s getting in the way of paying for a trip abroad. I’m willing to give up my car for the bus, when I realise that’s holding me back from a house deposit.

You don’t even have to cut the extras from your life entirely. There are some things that are nice to do, but you don’t feel the need for them every day.

So you might tell yourself you’ll do those things once a month, or once a fortnight. You might even find that doing them less often makes them more special when you.

While you’re getting used to your new lifefriendly budget, help yourself cement the habit by writing it down and tracking how you’re going.

Some people like Excel, some people like a pen and paper, and some people like apps that do everything for you automatically.

The how doesn’t matter. What matters is that you write it down somewhere, because as you learned already with the diary, it looks so different when put somewhere concrete.

Don’t think of it as depriving yourself. Think of it as creating room for all the good things you want, by cutting out all the wasteful rubbish you never cared about in the first place.