Taking control of your finances might seem like a scary thing to do. Perhaps you find yourself feeling like you don’t know where to start or maybe you feel overwhelmed by the idea of it all. Taking charge of your finances doesn’t have to be hard and I am excited to share with you exactly how easy it can be with the Well Planned Budget Workbook.
What is the Well Planned Budget Workbook?
The Well Planned Budget Workbook is a specially designed workbook that helps guide you through every step of budget creation. This budget workbook is designed to help busy families deep dive into their spending, financial goals, and debt and create a budget that works for them!
Getting to Know your Well Planned Budget Workbook
When you first open your budget workbook you will notice there are 7 distinct sections. Each of these sections has been designed to walk you through understanding your own budget, setting goals, creating a budget, and creating a plan for achieving your goals.
It is important to make sure you spend time in each section to get the full benefit of this workbook. I cannot state this enough, work through each section.
I say this because, in order to truly be successful in budgeting, you have to fully understand your financial situation.
Set Financial Goals
In the beginning, it is important to take time to set some financial goals. These goals can be big, lofty goals or simple goals, or a mix of both.
It is important that you take the time to create these goals because these goals will be the fuel for sticking with your budget.
By identifying what you want and WHY you want it, you will be more likely to do the hard work to stick with your budget.
Create Monthly Habits
The financial goals you set may require you to do a bit of work to achieve them.
Big goals may feel overwhelming and this will often lead to us not following through. To make sure you are staying on track with your financial goals, I recommend committing to 3 habits a month.
These habits are changes you vow to make that when accomplished, will bring you closer to achieving your financial goals.
In the Well Planned Budget Workbook, you will find 12 months’ worth of undated tools that include monthly habit trackers. Be sure to fill these out at the start of each month. Make sure you are choosing goals/habits that will bring you closer to achieving your financial goals
Understand Finance is More Than Just a Budget
The most important part of the Well Planned Budget Workbook is creating your monthly budget but ending there would be a mistake. Simply creating a budget is just the beginning.
When we create a budget we are working to determine the best use of our income and what constitutes “best” depends on our financial story.
For some, your financial story may include a mountain of debt you want to quickly pay down. For others, there might not be debt but there are big dreams of investments or early retirement.
The Well Planned Budget Workbook will walk you through understanding all of your outstanding debt as well as help you build a plan for savings.
Related: How to Create a Budget
Determine Your Savings Goals
No matter what big goals you are chasing it is important to understand the financial need to achieve them. Use the pages of your Well Planned Budget Workbook to work through the amounts needed for your emergency fund, sinking funds, and large event savings.
These tools will help you to determine how much of your income needs to be reallocated to achieve these financial savings goals.
Learn Your Debts
Nothing holds us back faster than debt. Getting out of debt gives you the freedom to chase your financial dreams without the difficulty of debt.
Be sure to take time to look over your entire life and take stock of the outstanding debts in you may have. Use the workbook tools to help you determine a debt repayment plan.
The Well Planned Budget Workbook can help you create a plan for traditional or accelerated debt repayment. As you pay down your debt you will be able to move these remaining funds to either
1. Pay down other debts even faster or
2. Towards your savings goals.
Become Familiar with Your Income
There are several different budgeting tools out there and each one usually guides you through handling your finances based on a “traditional” by monthly income.
Related: Budgeting with Different Incomes
We understand that being paid every two weeks, while it is the most common pay schedule, it isn’t the only one. Therefore the Well Planned Budget Workbook includes a whole section to help you determine your average monthly income based on how frequently you are paid.
No longer will non-traditional paydays hold you back from creating a budget and truly sticking with it.
Related: The Well Planned Budget Workbook
Commit to Your Budget
Creating a budget truly is the easiest part. The hard part is sticking to all that you said you would. Sticking to a budget requires lifestyle changes, financial check-ins, and commitment to doing the work.
The Well Planned Budget Workbook includes 12 months’ worth of tools that will help you to actually stick with the budget you have created.
Personally, I set aside no more than an hour each week to make sure all the bills for the week are paid, to complete my expense tracker, and to update accounts as needed.
Committing to the process is key to achieving your financial goals.
Check-in Monthly
Set aside time each month to review your spending, debt balances, and savings. Fill in your trackers and update your budget as debts are paid down. Be sure to adjust your income if any increases in cash flow occur.
Use your monthly bill payment tracker to be sure all of your bills are being paid on time. Additionally, be sure to utilize your monthly expense trackers. These trackers will help you to see in what areas you are overspending or in what areas your could adjust your spending.
Creating a budget and finding a way to chase your financial dreams does not have to feel out of reach. The Well Planned Budget Workbook is here to help guide you through every step of the process.
If you are looking for more guidance on setting up your household budget AND sticking with it, sign up below to take part in my FREE 5 day Well Planned Budget Email Course.
This email course will take you on a more in-depth, step-by-step, journey to creating your budget, adjusting your budget, and STICKING WITH it.
By signing up you will also get access to my Well Planned Budget Mini Bundle (for free!). This bundle includes five budgeting tools to help you through the process.
CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO PIN AND SAVE FOR LATER
