Whenever you’re starting to budget for the first time, it can be really frustrating. Oftentimes, when people give budgeting a go, you can pretty much expect that their category amounts are going to be off for a few months. 

Of course, this will make many new budgeters get frustrated and decide that budgets aren’t really something that works for them anyway. 

If they would only keep at it, they would learn that eventually, you do get pretty good at knowing what your category numbers will be month to month. You start planning ahead for your irregular expenses, and the benefit of having a plan for your money outweighs the frustrations of being off in your categories. 

Eventually, you start to get those categories right. 

You get way more accurate. Sure, you’ll always be doing some cleaning up and moving and adjusting. In fact, intentionally rolling with the punches is one of YNAB’s 4 rules for budgeting. 

But what do you do when you’re just consistently missing the boat on one of your categories?

Being a budgeting nerd, one of my favorite things to do would be to work on our household budget. I’d be dreaming of where we were going, and working the numbers to make sure that we were heading in the right direction. If you like to do that like I do, it’s easy to build a perfect budget-A reasonable budget that hits all the right notes and has the perfect amount for you to spend each month. 

But the problem is that living in that perfect world, where you and your spouse behave perfectly when it comes to money may not be realistic.

So what happens is that you decide how much you’d like to spend on groceries, but you find that you’re constantly missing it. It’s frustrating. You thought that it would be reasonable to spend that amount each month on groceries, but here you are blowing that category yet again. 

It may be that not only are you spending too much on groceries, but you find that you’re eating out too much as well. 

Then, it’s a cascade of adjusting your budget. Pretty soon, the money that you thought you were saving this month is gone. 

But that’s ok-because next month will be different. 

Right?

Chances are, next month isn’t going to work out either, and you get in a cycle where you’re always one month away from really hitting the perfect budget.

And if you’re counting on the money you should be saving each month to hit an important goal, there’s a real chance that you may not make it. 

It’s time to make some adjustments. 

There are probably two things that you’ll want to consider. One for today and one for the much longer term. 

The first action you need to take is to simply adjust that budget category to reflect reality. The reality is that you probably aren’t going to only spend as much as you were hoping to, so why not face the facts? Look to see what your average spending has been over the past few months or for the year. It’s probably a bigger number than you’d like, but at least it’s a number that is real. 

That’s the amount you need to be budgeting for each month. So right off the bat, you’re going to see that you aren’t saving as much as you’d like, but it’s what you’ve been doing anyway.

Then, this month, you can follow a budget that will give you a chance at success.

If that’s as good as you can do for that category, then you need to consider this clarity a success. At least your budget will reflect what’s really going to happen and it will help you plan that much better. 

But, what if you know that you really could do better?

Then you’ve got some work to do.

You’ll need to work on that category but it won’t get any better from working on that perfect budget each week. The work will come in the way of creating healthy habits that help bring that pesky budget category down. 

Let’s take food. If that’s your worst category, you’re in good company. It is for me, and I think it is for most folks.

Keeping that category down won’t be found in just picking a number and trying to stick with it. The work will be found in setting up a habit of planning out your meals each week and making the decision ahead of time about what’s going to be for dinner. 

If I’m tired and we don’t have a plan for dinner that night when I call home on my way home from work, our chances of picking up something just shot up like 100%. If however, we have the stuff at home, we know this is the plan, and we already have it in our mind, our chances of fixing that dinner and saving money just went up dramatically. 

Now I’ve got a fighting chance to stay within my budget number this month.

Work to lower that budget category down to where you’d like it, but in the meantime, make sure that your budget is reflecting reality.