How to Stick to Your Budget

Recently, a friend of mine and I got into a conversation about budgets. “I know how to write a budget,” she said. “But how do I stick to one?!”

She’s not alone. Most people who have budgets have problems following them, as evidenced by the fact that the average American savings rate is negative. Building a budget—with all its intricacies and possibilities—seems like child’s play in comparison to actually sticking with it.

There are a few ways to make sticking to a budget possible. Follow these tips to help keep your budget on track.

1. Keep regular tabs. You won’t stick to your budget if you don’t track where you are regularly. Weekly or bi-weekly, take an hour to tally up which areas you’re under or over. If you are over-budget in one category, you can make adjustments to keep your overall expenditures under-budget for the month. If you don’t check in regularly, though, you won’t know you’re over until it’s too late.

2. …But not too regular. Checking in daily not only takes a lot of time and energy, it also makes sticking to your budget seem arduous. Putting your spending up against your budget two to four times a month is plenty. Any more than that and you risk burning out.

3. Let it breathe. Your budget is a living thing that will change. Let it! You shouldn’t hold yourself to a rigid budget. If you want to splurge in one category, don’t punish yourself. Just make sure you take the excess amount from another category or categories to make up for it. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak, is an important element in sticking to a budget. If you try to make your budget too rigid, you will inevitably stop following it, just as trying to follow an extreme diet will eventually lead you to gorging on chocolate cake at three in the morning. Cut yourself some slack.