Budgeting With A Purpose

Frugal Hacks had a great article the other day entitled Budgeting With a Purpose: Keeping Your Goal in Mind. I think this was just the quick check-in and pick-me-up I needed. Sometimes I get really tired of saving money and wishing I had more to play around with. But the fact is, my husband and I are trying to focus on paying down our credit card debt with a goal of being debt-free in three years. Just three months in, I get exhausted. I will admit it. So I thought I would share this with any of you in the same boat:

Even for seasoned budgeting pros, there can be times when the day to day aspects
of keeping up with a budget can seem annoying, irritating, or even daunting. This has happened to me before, especially when times are rough, I'm emotionally upset, or I just seem too busy to keep up with anything.

At these times, my biggest help is making sure that I budget with a purpose - that I keep in mind my reason for spending and saving in the ways I choose. This is different for everyone - it may be to save for a new home, to be able to move to a
different place, to provide for their kids, to have kids, to retire, or a multitude of other things.

This is where keeping that goal in mind helps me stick to tracking my spending and following a budget. if I feel like it is all too much, I remind myself of why we're doing what we're doing. If you need a little extra push, you can paste a picture of the "something" you are working towards. For us, it is being debt free. I have a little picture of a student loan balance (our last non-mortgage debt) of zero on my desktop, just in case I need a little push.

Does your budget have a goal? Does it need one?