Jared

Remember, the goal is to make small improvements when attacking our goals.

We’ve learned from James Clear that we want to make small 1% improvements every single day. While this feels like we’re not making any progress in the moment, after a year of this steady progress, we find ourselves being 37x better over the previous year.

So if our goal becomes to live to budget another month as opposed to moving worlds to get that debt paid off your first month of budgeting, then we’re going to want to keep our budgets simple. Especially at the beginning.

I love YNAB. I literally have a shirt. And I like to wear it in public(shoutout to the other budget nerd dude who came up to talk because of that shirt).

But I’m going to be honest with you. YNAB is a little complicated. It really is a power tool that can do anything. I can really get my budget to behave in any way I want. But that will also mean that there is more of a learning curve with YNAB.

So how do you move forward with YNAB when it’s a little complicated?

First, you’re going to focus on living to budget another day. Second, you want to make your budget simple at first.

So the most important thing about budgeting is that you keep going. Sorry to say this, but, you’ll probably get it wrong a whole lot. 

And I’m here to say that’s ok. But worst thing you could do is quit. 

So I know that it’s almost summer, but let’s take a trip back in time to remember life around November and December.

Can you believe we’ve been doing this for over two months? It just doesn’t seem possible. I’m starting to feel like time has a really weird feel right now.

For some people, not having a schedule is throwing their life into chaos. For Katie and I, the schedule of our small kids feels like an unrelenting march that won’t stop.

Katie and I are lucky though. As teachers, we still have our jobs and are getting paid. But I know that this isn’t everyone, which can make for some really scary times. 

The uncertainty of what’s going on reminds us how important it is to have have a budget and to be intentional with our money.

But even if you aren’t facing financial hardship right now, the reminder of how important it is to have your financial house in order is welcome.

I felt super embarrassed starting this blog. 

I started it about a year ago, but had been thinking about doing it for much longer. 

I had watched other people start blogs or create social media accounts about their interests and projects and that really interested me. In fact, I would think it was really cool when someone else started an account that followed an interest of theirs. 

But this is not something that I thought I could do. 

Finally, I decided to start. I had never done any writing for anything like this, and it had been a really long time since I had done any writing for school. But here I was, trying to remember how to write something. 

Last week I talked about why you always need to be investing in the stock market. I talked about why you should start investing as soon as you start working and keep it going all throughout your career. 

But I also know that things are pretty tough for some people out there. Katie and I are lucky. We’re both teachers and there doesn’t seem to be any rough waters ahead from a job security point right now. 

But I know that there are a ton of people who depend on our ability to get out and interact with the world for their jobs. 

That’s why your priority might need to be building up cash reserves for an emergency that’s happening now or in the future. 

So a couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about how the stock market tanking wasn’t really that big of a deal and not a huge cause for concern.

I know everything that’s been going on can seem scary and I would totally be lying if I didn’t say that there were moments when I wasn’t a little freaked out myself.

It can also be scary from a financial perspective. And even if you were invested in good mutual funds and didn’t really have anything to be worried about from an investing perspective, the truth is, people have been let go from their jobs during all of this. When the rug is pulled out from under you, it’s a very real reason to be frightened and scared.

Everyone should be doing an assessment of where they stand financially right now.

Which categories should be in your budget?

Here’s where you have to be absolutely perfect. It’s where you need to have the perfect set of categories, with all of the perfect set of percentages assigned to each category.

Just kidding, it’s another place where we can overthink. I know I’ve done it. I’ve spent way too long searching for what other budgeting categories people use, and googling what percentage we should be allocating to each category. 

I know that Covid-19 has been on everyone’s mind. In fact, it’s easy for it all to become a little too much. This weekend, I decided that I had definitely been on my phone for far too long and needed a break.

I’m a teacher, so the week that the WHO declared a pandemic and everything started shutting down was the week that my screen time report told me my screen habits had increased by 50%. The following week, it went up another 25%.

So I won’t add anymore to the noise that surrounds Covid-19, except where interests in this blog lay. Which is why I want to outline why you want to stay the course when it comes to investing in the stock market during events like this.

I can say is that I’m really glad I’ve already seen a stock market crash in my adult life. Now that might seem like a weird thing to say, but here’s why.

So I have a question for you.

Have you started to keep a budget yet? I’ve really been hammering this topic lately more than another other single personal finance topic.

For the last two weeks, I’ve really highlighted why I think YNAB is the best tool to create and stick to a budget. I realized that I had been spending so much time mentioning YNAB but I hadn’t really gone in depth about why it’s my favorite way to budget.

That’s why I decided to spend one week talking bout why their software is my favorite software for budgeting. Then last week, I talked about why the method they use works so well with the software they use.

But now I want to really emphasis a point that I think is the most important thing to consider as you make improvements to your finances.

That is: The tool doesn’t matter, only the method.

So I think that creating a budget every month is critical to finding success with your finances. In fact, I spend so much time talking about my favorite budget tool, YNAB, that last week I decided that I would go a little more in depth and write about why I love their software so much.

This week, I’m going to stick with the YNAB theme but instead of talking about their software, I wanted to talk about the method that they’ve built their software on.

Now before I go any further, I want to convey how important these rules are for anyone. These rules are not just important for someone that’s using the YNAB software, but for anyone looking to stick with a budget.

I want to repeat something that I think is really important.

The tool you use to manage your money doesn’t matter. Your consistency in working in your budget and your willingness to get back up when you fall off the wagon matters way more.