Budgeting can be the best thing, but it can also feel like the worst thing. It helps you achieve your goals in life, gain stability and build wealth. However, it can also be completely draining and challenging to stick with it long-term because you have to tell yourself, “no,” pretty often. So what do you do when you fall off the budgeting bandwagon?
If you have been budgeting for any period of time, you have to know how tempting it is to “take a break” from it, just for a little bit. Budgeting is work and it can be really hard to stick with it, especially if your debt payoff is slow going, or you have really far out long-term goals you are working toward.
We all want instant gratification and budgeting is not that game. If you are working toward your goals of becoming debt free, building a retirement, saving for a house, etc., all of those things take time and discipline. But, come on, BORING!
This makes it super easy to just take a break for a week or a month. But be careful! This can totally derail your progress and your plans.
Before you know it, you are 6 months down the road, you have a bunch of new clothes, new holiday house decorations, you have eaten out, you have been going to the movies and you are no closer to reaching your goals.
This happens so easily because all the fun stuff feels so much better than telling yourself, “no.”
When you realize you have fallen off the budgeting bandwagon, there are four things you should do.
1. Resist the urge to go even further overboard.
Just because you realize you have gone off budget does not mean you need to just absolutely destroy your budget. Not adhering to your plan does not mean you need to go nuts and spend even more money.
I use this example a lot, but it is such a good illustration of what you should not do.
When my husband is driving, he has a really hard time making quick decisions when I give him navigation instructions. If I tell him he needs to turn left in 2 lights and he is in the far right lane, he panics. He stresses out about trying to get over to the left lane and starts to speed up. As the turn gets closer, if he isn’t already close to the lane, it’s game over. He loses his freaking mind. In a panic, instead of slowing down with a turn signal on (like a normal human being), he guns it, flies even faster past his turn and gets super pissed he missed it.
I am not making this up. It sounds so ridiculous, but instead of slowing down and trying to get over, he punches it and speeds off in a fury. This then makes him miss the next 3 to 4 turnarounds he could have used to get to the turn he needed.
Every time.
This is exactly what you do not want to do when you know you are not budgeting as you should be. You do not want to take it even further to an extreme. Instead, you should pump the breaks and turn on your turn signal to get back in the right lane.
2. Reassess your Big Why.
Your “why” for wanting to budget is meant to be your motivation to stay on track when things get tough. People don’t budget because it’s fun. People budget for a reason. Maybe they want to get out of debt, pay off their mortgage, get a new car, start a business, build a retirement, etc.
The “why” for your budgeting venture is supposed to be a reason bigger than any excuse you could ever come up with. This reason should keep you on track when things get tough (and they will!).
If you have fallen off the budgeting bandwagon, your “why” likely wasn’t as meaningful as you had originally thought. If you couldn’t look at your “why” and remember the motivation for doing what you were doing, then your “why” wasn’t strong enough.
If you need to come up with a different “why,” do that now. If you had a good enough “why,” but did haven’t it in a visual place to remind you, fix it! Figure out the “why” that will actually keep you motivated and make it visual.
Don’t give yourself an excuse to not budget.
