If you’re looking for budgeting tips, you’ve come to the right place!
5 Years ago, I was a financial nightmare. With over $40,000 in debt, no savings and no concept of how to live within my means, I was scared for my future.
I was so disorganized that I was sure that I lacked whatever life skills were necessary to budget effectively. I couldn’t manage to even do my laundry or dishes, how in the world was I going to create a budget and actually stick to it.
I was overwhelmed and felt defeated before I even started.
But I was also determined. There was no other option.We had to make a budget work.
It was the only way.
The next five years were eventful but exciting. We had two kids, paid off every cent of our debt, I quit my job and started this blog, and my husband Jon quit his job to start his own brewery.
And do you know the secret to every single one of those accomplishments?
That budget.
Once we got the hang of which budgeting tips really worked and which didn’tit got easier to stick with it.
But you don’t have to struggle with trying to figure out which budgeting tips work. That’s what I’m here for.
The Best Budgeting Tips (that really work!)
Free Budgeting Course
The 90-day budgeting for beginners boot camp.
The 90-day budget for beginners boot camp gives you step by step instructions for how to create, set up and maintain a budget specifically meant for women who are overwhelmed with the idea of budgeting. Join the free boot camp here.
How to Make a Budget
How to start a budget when you suck at budgeting.
This article explains in plain Englishhow to start abudget even when you suck at budgeting. Again, it’s perfect for people who struggle with understanding budgeting and how to actually keep up with a budget. It makes no assumptions that you understand and starts you with the basics. Read it here.
How to Manage Your Money
How do I find the best program to track my budget?
This post details how to find the best budget app. It reviews 3 popular apps and who would benefit the most from each. (Apps discussed are Calendarbudget, Every Dollar, and You Need a Budget.) Read it here.
How 14 bank accounts saved our budget.
Having multiple bank accounts is one of the best tips we’ve learned! It makes budgeting so freaking easy! You can read the full post here.
What to do when you can’t pay your bills.
This system outlines the steps to take if you find yourself in a situation where you can’t pay your bills. It’s a simple but extremely effective system. You can read about it here.
One family’s budget with low income and high debt completely reworked by an expert.
While not a specific budget trick, this is a complete financial makeover of a family. It uses one family’s real life, real numbers and shows how they can go from not being able to pay their electric bill to having a down payment for a house in less than 5 years. It’s super detailed and very informative. You can read it here.
How to build an emergency fund that you won’t spend.
This is the system that we used to save our first $1,ooo for the emergency fund. It explains why people spend their emergency fund ad the simple step you can take to avoid that. If you need to know how to build an emergency fund, you can read it here.
How we reduced our spending by over $23,000 in a year.
This post walks you through the almost 20 substitutions we took in our first year of budgeting to reduce our spending by $23,537! This set the foundation for me to be able to quit my job which improved the quality of our life significantly. You can read more about it here.
How do I stop my husband from spending money?
This is the exact system I used to get my very reluctant husband on board with budgeting. I was positive that money fights would always be a part of our marriage and that we would never see eye to eye, but this system proved me wrong. It’s been almost 4 years since our last money fight! You can read it here.
Budgeting Tips
The weird trick I use to stay under budget every single month!
I won’t spoil the surprise (and you wouldn’t believe me anyway), but this actually does work! In fact, it works so well that 3 years later, I still do this every single month! You can read more about the weird trick to stay under budget here.
5 times that being cheap is crazy expensive.
As important as budgeting is, we learned the hard way that for these 5 things, being thrifty costs you more money in the end. Lesson learned! You can read more here.
5 lazy ways to stop overspending.
These 5 budgeting tips will help even the laziest spender start saving more. You can read more here.
10 surprising things that are cheaper to buy than to make.
This was another area we had some hard lessons learned. After trying to save money by making these things from scratch, we realized that we would spend much less if we just bought them when we wanted them. Not only did we save money, but we saved hours of our time! You can read more here.
Spending freeze rules (and the secret to saving 1,000 quickly!)
We’ve used the secret to saving $1,000 quickly so many times in the last 5 years! It helped us created our emergency fund and paid off a pretty big chunk of our debt. Even though we’re debt free now and our income has risen significantly, we still try to do this at least yearly. You can get the details and the spending freeze rules in this post.
The art of saying no friends and family when you need to save money.
This system completely changed the way we interacted with our friends (in a good way!). It gave us an “out” when people asked us to attend an event that was out of our budget. Not only did this not hurt the friendship, but it encouraged friends to openly talk about budgeting as well. You can read more here.
This step by step system helps you track your expenses without headaches. You can read it here.
How to build a $1,000 emergency fund in just 90 days.
This post highlights the many different ways you can get $1,000 in 90 days. It’s a great read if you want to make extra money to throw at debt or to build an emergency fund. This is one of my favorite budgeting tips! You can read more here.
31 days to radically reduce your expenses.
This is a book that saved me major money in medical expenses! The author, Kalyn Brooke is naturally money smart and was really transparent about how she handles her money. I really loved getting the perspective of someone who is naturally organized with her money. You can see more here.
30+ ways to save money each month.
This post has not only simple substitutions, but it also has a few easy ways to make money quickly which allows you to save outside of your budgeted income. Read more here.
An easy guide to start your journey to live on one income. Perfect for the mom that longs to be a stay at home mom but feels like she can’t. Read more here.
A super simple overview of how to create a budget that works. You can read it here.
Love round-ups like these?
These are a few of my favorites…
You can learn how to save money here.
You can learn all how to manage your money better here.
