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Nobody wants financial stress, but we understand previous experience, for many will argue that a budget is not the path to peace. We have seen a style of budgeting turn this anxiety into a welcome routine over and over.
The solution to positive budgeting is something we practice and share, a process that gives answers. Budget plans with tracking are missing some key elements. This process lifts the fog. It gives us clarity to see things we didn’t before. It may sound similar, but the practice has proven again and again to be significant. The need for spending character is greater by far without this clarity and the encouragement of the results.
Some people may be doing these things, but you never know how to explain the process to others. For others, this may be a different approach that will help you see the budgeting you want.
The positive movement was a pivot.
What is more critical, curing cancer or preventing cancer? The answer depends on whether you have cancer or not. If you have cancer, you certainly don’t want more cancer, so that adds some weight to prevention. The cure is fixing the negative, while prevention makes the positive sustainable and hopefully even stronger. We still want the treatment, but with fewer people needing a cure.
The emphasis on this has grown over my life, not just in medicine but also in psychology. Several names are given as the fathers of the modern mindset for psychology, known as positive psychology. The leaders claimed there was more mental health and traction in teaching people about their positive strengths and possibilities than focusing on how to see all shortcomings as results of some victimization. They acknowledged terrible things happen but claimed something was missing when we exclusively focus on overcoming the negative as the path forward.
Some more extreme concepts were proposed as part of the positive movement. One example was the belief that a positive outlook and affirmations guarantee a preferred outcome. While we hope these people had good intentions, one argument they made was correct. If you don’t believe enough to try, then the positive that is possible won’t happen.
Some great resources on this topic include Man’s Search for Meaning by Victr Frankl, StrengthFinders, and Positive Intelligence. In general, these and other thoughtful leaders were in the business of influencing others before social media made the name influencer famous.
We have looked at health care and psychology. Now, we will look at budgeting. At its worst, budgeting is seen as a negative reminder that our life will never be as good as it could be if we were rich. The middle road budget mindset is budgeting is just getting the math right and nothing more significant than that. Most people have never considered budgeting something that can be done well.
Can budgeting be done with strength? Is there a way to budget that has a profound positive impact on our future? Budgeting is seen as needful, just like a routine good night’s sleep. Yet, most people are as good at getting a good night’s sleep as they are at good budgeting.
How do we look at budgeting?
With health care, we have many decades of medical professionals who provide care. With mental health, we also see professionals spanning many decades. When it comes to personal finances, familiarity with budgeting coaches is new for most.
Most of us know and have taken advantage of medical care professionals, and many of us have friends in the profession. Some of us have taken advantage of certified counselors, like high school counselors. Yet, few of us have ever talked with someone trained to assist us with personal finances. When it comes to personal finances, we look at it like people used to look at mental health. We are ashamed if we struggle with personal finances. We would rather hide our struggles because we feel everyone should budget well.
We have a tradition of teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. These are considered basic skills, yet they must be taught. When it comes to driving a car or truck, we believe all people should be able to do these things, and we find no shame in someone taking a driver’s education. When people have problems driving, the judge will send them to special driver training. We don’t look down on these people either. Well, if they learn what is being taught, we don’t.
Budgeting is another core life skill. We have heard comments from people who have never heard of budget coaching. Near the top of these comments is that someone should teach financial skills as a required course for getting a high school diploma. Without this training, we know some people get better at budgeting with age, and others get better at surviving financial challenges. What we will say again and again at Budgeting Today is that the two things we can avoid with good budgeting are waste and regret. While we want to avoid the negative, our focus today is achieving the positive.
Achieving financial peace and beyond
Good budgeting helps us start planning and acting on things before anxiety convinces us to start. Our budgeting brings us clarity and motivates us to focus on things that matter to us. In our article on Base Budgeting, we cover our actual process and what we call the Freedom Flywheel as the key to driving more and more energy into our finances with good budgeting. We will cover it short and sweet here.
BASE Budgeting
B: budget – plan your expenses based on expected income
A: assign – delegate your income as it arrives to specific budget categories (don’t just track if you overspend)
S: spend – from assigned income, spend within available resources. If you want to or accidentally spend more, pull that money from another category + keep records that will make the next stage simpler as needed
E: evaluate – review the budget, what went well, what could have gone better, what one thing will I focus on next cycle
This process is more than classic basics. The dictionary version of budgeting is covered by ( B ). We have found the ( A ) assignment to be a game changer for ( S ) spending and ( E ) evaluation and the flow of the repeating cycle of budgets ahead.
The BFF, Budgeting Freedom Flywheel, takes our budgeting technique and creates a battery of financial strength. If you talk to budget coaches, you will hear them tell their clients, one after the next, that it takes 90 days to get traction, three months. We chose the flywheel as our mental model because they spin up slowly, but once they are going, it doesn’t take much to keep the energy available inside them.
Doing the BASE steps every month gives us unexpected insight into where the money goes, what we really need, and what we want to spend our available income on. Following this approach moves us beyond regret to what may seem like fantastic discipline to those around us. When we know what we want and what another choice will cost us, it just doesn’t take super discipline to follow through. It just takes truth. Using a BFF approach to BASE budgeting is like adding AI (artificial intelligence) to budgeting without the need for AI. You and I are smart enough to answer these questions if we have the right tools and routines.
Is this what your budget does for you? You don’t need to follow our process to get the same results. Everybody needs budgeting that helps them see blind spots and guides them to make better choices.
Sometimes, it is hard to do this on our own, and a budget coach can help us in the same way a personal trainer helps someone achieve physical fitness goals. Everyone can benefit by having someone outside themselves to look at budget plans and results. If you are married, your spouse is essential. We have seen this practice change finances from being a marriage stressor to being something that builds unity and strength in their relationship.
Conclusion
Budgeting can be positive or negative. If things are going well, and life’s challenges avoid you, then loose budgeting works great. More effective skills are needed when life’s challenges take a special interest in your journey. Developing these skills in the rough seasons is possible. Developing the skill before the rough season will make for less rough seasons, and avoid them altogether many times.
If we do well with our skills, we will still have some rough seasons. We will also have mostly positive results. Even the challenging times will flow better if we learn the power of positive budgeting.
