Budgeting – Not Just a Good Idea For the Young

Budgeting has never been one of my favorite words or exercises. According to Gallup, the over 50 group is more worried about finances than any other age group. We often think budgeting is something we need to get our young adult children to do. Those that are just starting out in life, they should be budgeting. Actually, at this time in our life, it is still important to maintain a household budget. In fact, it may be more advantageous than ever before.  

Gallup goes on to say that people worry about having enough to retire, maintaining standard of living, and paying for medical costs. Budgeting can be one of the best ways to understand how valid and to what degree those areas should be of concern. For our household, we decided to start a business that could help us in retirement. However, starting a business rarely produces income in the first several months. That forced us to take a hard look at our finances.

We took every budget item and asked ourselves, was that expense still necessary. What could we reasonably live with out? We found there were a lot of charges on credit cards of services we really weren’t using or could live with out. It freed up some money to pay off some bills and made money management much easier.

We look at budgeting as a way that we take control of our money, instead of it controlling us. There may be a lot of fear in doing a budget, but I encourage you to press in.  At one time, it was something I feared because I didn’t want to know the damage. I also thought it might force us to say “no” to things we wanted. When my husband and I came together on it and announced to our kids that we were serious about it, it was liberating! We found the problem areas, the bad habits, and without judgment managed them together.

Try it out, start budgeting, and take control of your life!