DO YOU HAVE A BUDGET?

Very few people ever bother to budget, which is why so many people are in debt. Few really realize just how much they spend on worthless expenses and in the end regret for the expenses they’ve made. If you want to keep your spending under control, it’s essential that you make a budget. What is a budget? A budget is a written plan on how to manage your money. A budget allows you to get a handle on the flow of your money⎯how much is coming in and where it goes to. With that information in hand, you can make intelligent choices about how to spend. In order for us to gain financial freedom, we need to be conscious of things and attitudes that are crucial to our finances. A budget is one such thing.

Goals of Budgeting
What are the goals of a budget? I made an acrostics of the word called BUDGET.

B for Boundaries⎯If you know your boundaries and set your limits for your expenses, you’ll able to live within your means. It also helps you stay away from debt.

U for Unwanted stress and pressures⎯Bills and utility expenses should be expected month in and month out. So if you have set aside the money before it even comes, it helps you relieve unwanted stress and pressure in life.

D for Debt-free⎯A written budget is a key to succeeding at being debt free. This may mean eliminating costly activities such as getting rid of cable, traveling less, eating out less, and watching fewer movies. It also helps you know how much money you can devote each month to paying off debt.

G for Generate more and give⎯It will help you to determine specifically how much money you need in order to meet your needs. It will also help you know how much you want to believe God for excess in order for you to be a blessing to others. God will take whatever you give to others and give it back to you. Remember what we sow is what we reap.

E for Eradicate impulse buying⎯It helps you manage your money effective, you need to fight impulse-buying tendencies and stick your spending to your budget plan. When you enter a supermarket or department store, normally you will see many items on sale that may trigger your impulse to buy. Hence, when you have a budget, you must be firm on how much you want to spend. If you are kind of person who cannot control his spending habit, leave your credit card and extra cash at home.
Remember, if you don’t have it, you can’t spend it.

T for Trust God⎯It will help you determine how much money you need to ask and trust God for more. Believe that He will provide not only for our needs but also for the desires of our heart.

Shop Till You Drop

Let us ask ourselves these questions. What are your spending habits? Are any of these reasons keeping you from getting ahead and keeping you in debt? If so, you will want to work towards breaking those habits. Spending habits can be changed. You need to identify the spending leaks that give you immediate pleasure or satisfaction. Then substitute desirable spending behaviors that will help you reach your financial goals.

Some practical tips to control spending:

• Avoid exposing yourself to things that tempt you to spend. Stay away from stores, except when you have something you absolutely need to buy. Make a list and stick to it when shopping and then leave the store. Just browsing can lead to buying.

• Plan your shopping. Go with a purpose in mind. Use that list! Extras you don’t really need can certainly push up the total at the cash register.


• Limit your number of trips to the mall or restaurants. It is so tempting to eat or buy food outside even if we know that there are food prepared at home.

• Don’t shop in a weakened condition. By shopping when hungry, tired or depressed, you may find yourself overspending.

Remember for things to change we have to change.
Change our habits and we change our lifestyle.
Change our lifestyle and we change our destiny.

Use Money As A Tool

What is the purpose of a tool, is it to make life easier or harder? I think the answers seems to be pretty obvious. It is to make life easier.

The way we handle our finances is an indicator of what is inside our hearts. Show me your bank statement and I’ll tell you what kind of a person you are. The way we spend money and the way we handle it, tells much if we are using the money in the right manner or in wrong manner.

This reminded of me of a story of a rich man. There was a man who had worked all of his life and had saved all of his money. He was a real miser when it came to his money. He loved money more than just about anything, and just before he died, he said to his wife, "Now listen, when I die, I want you to take all my money and place it in the casket with me. I wanna take my money to the afterlife."

So he got his wife to promise him with all her heart that when he died, she would put all the money in the casket with him.

Well, one day he died. He was stretched out in the casket, the wife was sitting there in black next to her closest friend. When they finished the ceremony, just before the undertakers got ready to close the casket, the wife said "Wait just a minute!" she had a shoe box with her, she came over with the box and placed it in the casket.

Then the undertakers locked the casket down and rolled it away.

Her friend said, "I hope you weren't crazy enough to put all that money in the casket."

She said, "Yes, I promised. I'm a good christian, I can't lie. I promised him that I was going to put that money in that casket with him."

"You mean to tell me you put every cent of his money in the casket with him?"

"I sure did, " said the wife. "I got it all together, put it into my account and I wrote him a check."

We need to understand that money is just a tool. It is to make our life easier and better. For example, what is the purpose of a chair? A chair is use for sitting. What if there was a big typhoon? Since you did not bring any umbrella, you used the chair as an umbrella. Aside from the fact that it will be ineffective. How do you think you will look like? Definitely funny! Because we are using the chair for the wrong purpose.

So now let me ask you a question. How would we know if you are using our money the right manner or the wrong manner? If the money we are making is making our life easier and better it means to say that we are using the money the right way. But if the money we are making is making our life harder and difficult it means to say that we are using the money the wrong way.

My hope is that our financial decisions will be based on being content with the basics, food, clothing and shelter. Wait patiently for the right time to come for the things that we may want and desire in our life.

Let us not focus on the things that we have and not on the things that we do not have.

For Godliness with contentment is great gain. Let us first stick to the basic and allow God to provide for the right time. When God blesses us with something in the right time he adds not trouble to it.

Introduction

Hi there! This will be my first official blog under this site. I am encouraged by Pastor Dennis to write my blog more on the serious and the educational and inspirational aspect specially in my area of passion FINANCES.

When I do financial seminar. Most often the questions that I get is how can I create wealth?

Personal finance is easy . Yah! Your right! It is easy if you know the fundamental law that governs your money. If you master this, you have mastered the entire game: To gain wealth, you have to spend less than what you earn and do it for a long long time.


That’s all it takes. Think of it another way. Think of it like an arithmetic equation:

[WHAT YOU EARN] - [WHAT YOU SPEND] = [WEALTH]

If you spend more than you earn, you are losing wealth. You are accumulating debt. You are heading in the wrong direction. However, if you are earning more than you spend, you are accumulating wealth. The greater the gap you can create between earning and spending, the faster you will accumulate wealth. There are only two things you can do to gain more wealth: spend less and earn more.

Spending less is something that you can do right now with little or no effort. Just stop spending money. Seriously. That’s it. Don’t buy things. Sure, you need to buy some things, but if you learn to pay less for the essentials (food, shelter, clothing), and if you can learn to reduce your wants, you can trim spending by a shocking amount. Learn how to shop for groceries and to make your own food. Develop a frugal mindset. Live simply.

Earning money is the other half of the wealth equation. If you can increase the amount you earn, you will accumulate wealth more quickly. Because earning money is so important, many personal finance books stress that your career is your most important asset. Your most important asset is not your house; it’s not your investment account; it is not — heaven forbid — your car. It’s your career and your capacity to earn.

This is why a college education is so important: it can help you land a better job, can increase your earning power. This is why your professional reputation is so important: what your employer thinks of you, what your co-workers think of you, what your customers think of you all play a role in your success. If you treat your career like a prized possession, you’ll have greater success at finding better paying, more-fulfilling jobs.

Smart personal finance really is this simple: spend less than you earn. What do I do with the money I make? First I set aside my best for God, my tithe to Him. Because He is my partner and the one who gives me the ability to produce wealth. Second set aside ten percent of what I make for savings and the emergency fund then adjust our standard of living to whatever is left. Let our standard of living adjust to what we make rather than asking our income to adjust to our standard of living. That makes a lot of difference.

If we continue to live a simple, frugal and discplined lifestyle of spending less than what you earn. When you grasp this concept, financial success and freedom is obvious.