I’ve been thinking …
I have never been very good with my money. I typically spent it as I had it and sometimes spent it even when I didn’t have it – credit is awesome. And if this is bad for your private life, I think that it’s even worse when you’re trying to start and grow a small business.
Having a budget, knowing where you are spending the money – and knowing where that money you spend is coming from – is critical for a successful business and for a happy life. So why do so few of us take budgeting seriously?
I think that for most of us budgeting is boring to think about, because making a budget requires us to put some real thought and effort into our lives – what we want from our lives – and what we want from our businesses.
But I think that there might be another reason that we don’t budget. We think that budgeting is about constraint. We think that budgeting is going to put limits on the things that we want to do – and that doing it anyway will add to our guilt. So … we don’t budget.
We are free to dream about the life we want and if we want it badly enough, then having a budget to get there should be liberating and exhilarating.
What if budgeting would actually set us free? Instead of looking at a budget as a prison, maybe we should look at it as freedom. Of course, to get into the habit of budgeting for our lives needs to be simple.
I have been introduced to a wonderful app that actually is easy to use and makes tracking my money less painful. The app is called Back in Black and it is really quite good. One of the best things about it is that it was made by an Edmonton-based company called Fission Media. Tom Dodd is a dear friend of mine and I would highly recommend giving the app a try. You can learn more about Back in Black here and also find it on the APP Store.
I think I’m going to take budgeting more seriously. What do you think?
Until tomorrow, GUNG Ho friends!