The Start of a New Adventure: Keeping a Budget
After taking an economics course and watching several episodes of Til Debt Do Us Part there is a lot of talk about money these days.
I've blogged about how I dislike the whiny "I'm a student woe is me" attitude because I know you have got to be smart about your money and not wait around for handouts like a bursary.
I've lived on my own since my first year of university in 2003 and I have had learned to be smart about my money (see woe is me entry).
But like that quote says a goal is just a dream until you write it down. Well now I feel the same way about a budget. In the past I've written down a budget, a vague idea of how much I will spend each school year on groceries, rent, etc... but I never kept track of my spending and probably could have been smarter about my habits.
So this will start a new adventure and periodically I will blog about my adventures of in keeping track of EVERYTHING. This will be the trouble, I've never been good at keeping/hanging onto receipts. This has caused me to lose money in the past.
But as the other cliché goes, it's never too late for anything.
I've blogged about how I dislike the whiny "I'm a student woe is me" attitude because I know you have got to be smart about your money and not wait around for handouts like a bursary.
I've lived on my own since my first year of university in 2003 and I have had learned to be smart about my money (see woe is me entry).
But like that quote says a goal is just a dream until you write it down. Well now I feel the same way about a budget. In the past I've written down a budget, a vague idea of how much I will spend each school year on groceries, rent, etc... but I never kept track of my spending and probably could have been smarter about my habits.
So this will start a new adventure and periodically I will blog about my adventures of in keeping track of EVERYTHING. This will be the trouble, I've never been good at keeping/hanging onto receipts. This has caused me to lose money in the past.
But as the other cliché goes, it's never too late for anything.
posted by Spitfire at 3:42 PM
1 Comments:
I wish more students took that attitude!
I started tracking everything when I started University about 15 years ago. My friends at the time thought it was anal; I just thought it was responsible. I didn't make any more money than they did, but they were the ones who were always broke!
I'd recommend using Quicken--cheap, powerful and easy to use. Once you make a regular habit of it, tracking everything is so simple. And with 15 years history of every dollar in and every dollar out, forcasting the future is so much easier.
Managing money properly is something that anyone can do, and yet so few people bother to do it right.
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