But what is a budget? A budget is telling your money where to go. If you look at your bank statement, it will show how you have prioritised how you spend your money. So a budget is really just a spending plan: how you allocate your money towards your needs and wants. Not one method of budgeting will work for everyone but there are several methods to choose from:This is one of the most popular forms of budgeting.
The core of this method is to help you understand your relationship with money as you record everything coming in and going out! When applying the Kakeibo method, you go back to basics – meaning no apps or excel spreadsheets, just a good old notebook where you record all your income and expenditure. For this method, you will need two notebooks; one to record your income and expenses once a month, and the other notebook where you write every expenditure you make during the month.
There is something profound and reflective in writing down your expenses by hand. It brings you close to your spending habits. We often lie to ourselves about just how much we spend on certain things; so this system allows you to come face to face with yourself and your habits. At the end of the month you reconcile what is in the first notebook to the daily expenditure notebook. Hopefully, this leads to more mindful spending in the long term.If you are more technologically inclined, there are many tools and apps available to help you manage your money better, most of them easily accessible on your mobile device. There are various tools including: