Budget for prosperity
When we hear the word ‘Budget‘, we have pictures of a noose or a straitjacket or anything that constrains us. We often confuse the term ‘Budget’ to mean ‘lack of freedom in spending’ or ‘lack of choice’ which is totally untrue.
Budgeting as a process is an excellent tool that helps us lead our lives with lot of power and choice. When we budget say Rs.1000 per month for eating out, having fun and entertainment, what we are doing is literally giving ourselves the permission to spend that amount every month on this category. Now how can this be a restriction?
You might say that “I want to spend Rs.2500 every month and hence budgeting Rs.1000 is bothering me”. Great, if you can afford to spend Rs.2500 every month on eating out and …, just go ahead and budget that amount. What you specify as the amount and the frequency is not dictated by others but is set by you. So how can that be harmful?
The real reason why we hate budgets is the same as why we hate to get medical checkups done. We do not like to know that we have broken / not honoured our own budgets in the former and we do not like to know that we are not sick.
Hence we think that it is better not to have Budgets. This is like saying that we don’t like to be seen as violating traffic laws and so let us throw all the signal lights and one-way streets. The problem is not with the Budgets or with the process but with our reluctance to treat them seriously.
(And this is the same with our Central and State Government Budgets where there is no sanctity for the institution of the budget).
So, if we truly manage the process of budgeting, we will clearly know whether our budgets are ok in the first place and more importantly whether we are managing our lives within the budgets that we set ourselves.
And over a period of time, budgeting will become an integral part of life and we will be surprised to see that we have the power and the discipline to say No to things that we might have easily succumbed earlier.
Surely that is True Peace & Prosperity!
In Enrich, there is a provision for specifying Regular or Variable Budgets for each Expense Head and the Variance summary shows very clearly where one has spent more than the budget that one specified!
Now you can clearly take decisions based on hard data either to revise your budget or to plan your expenses to be within your own budgets. You might even become very innovative or enterprising when you start taking actions consistent with your budgets.
