The general attitude around budgeting drives me a little crazy.
It seems to be viewed as the most basic building block of personal finance… which might be true… unless you equate the word ‘basic’ with the word ‘simple’.
It’s not simple.
And all the 5 minute budgeting posts and programs on the internet aren’t helping (please don’t search this site for them… I’m pretty sure I’m part of the problem).
But the more I work with people and help them master their cashflow… the more convinced I am that it takes a heck of a lot longer than 5 minutes.
It takes months to get into the flow.
In fact… there’s a pretty standard progression that I walk people through… and I’ve decided to illustrate it with cute pictures of animals.
If there are three words you remember from briefly skimming this article let be these…
Curiousity. Play. Balance.
Those should be the new budgeting words. They’re way better than ‘judgement’, ‘control’ and ‘self-loathing’.
This is something that all you creatives shuld know well. Stuff that matters takes time, and in order to master anything you have to be willing to experiment.
So this week why not take 5 minutes and start budeting in a whole different way…. start budgeting like a cat…
… and just see what happens.
P.S. There is lots of free stuff in the TOOLS section of R2R to help with tracking, and getting started. You should check it out.
Emily Nixon
Rags to Reasonable Community Outreach Coordinator
Emily Nixon is an actor/writer/director/filmmaking Swiss Army Knife. She is also a big money nerd and Community Outreach Coordinator for Rags to Reasonable.
She came to this work after becoming completely fed up with living paycheque-to-paycheque and being too afraid to look in her chequing account. She is passionate about empowering other artists and variable income earners to keep doing what they love and feel confident about their finances.
Email Emily at emily@ragstoreasonable.com
