One of the answers to the above problems is the so-called anti-budget. This method consists of the fact that you do not plan expenses for a month but, on the contrary, analyze how the previous month went, evaluate how much you managed to achieve your goals, and think about whether you need to correct something in your budget or not. Naturally, you will have to raise your bills for the past month, but it will still be easier to calculate how much you have spent than to predict how much you will spend.
Too Much Work
To make a budget, you need to plan it, and many people do not like to look into the future and predict all the expenses for the next month. These items are food, water, electricity, gas, rent, car expenses, loan repayments, membership dues, periodical subscriptions, etc. However, while most people remember these significant expenses, they forget about auto insurance payments, Christmas gifts, car repairs, dates, birthdays, school trips, and other expenses that are not monthly. Moreover, they immediately give up if they go beyond the standard budget.
The Budget Is Too Restrictive
Sticking to a budget is often like going on a diet to lose weight. You feel that by limiting spending, you are depriving yourself of something. Furthermore, cutting spending in one place allows you to increase it elsewhere eludes you. The budget will enable you to achieve your goals, but at the same time, you may feel disadvantaged – for example, if you want to sit in a restaurant, but the amount you have allocated for dining outside the home has already been used up.
I Do not Want to Swear
Married couples, drawing up a joint budget, sometimes quarrel over it. Furthermore, if spouses want to avoid confrontations, they are unlikely to want to participate in discussions about the budget. Quarrels over money are the leading cause of divorce; therefore, to avoid trouble, spouses do not get involved in budgeting. However, burying one’s head in the sand is hardly a good policy when the financial issue is pressing hard.
Data Overload
If you have many bank accounts and accounts, you have paperwork. This can take you long hours, especially if you do this for the first time. As a rule, budgets are calculated at the micro-level; every cent is considered, but not all of us have time for this.
Steps To Building an Anti-Budget:
- Select four to five spending items, including essential goals like savings.
- At the end of the month, calculate the percentage of how much you spent on each of these articles and estimate whether you managed to achieve your goals. Think about which of the articles you took too much or too little time and whether any adjustments are needed.
- Repeat all of this at the end of next month. When you reach your goals, set yourself more complex goals.
For example, your family decided that 15% of the budget would go to savings on New Year’s Eve. At the end of January, the family reviews all expenses and discovers that 75% of the money went to essential expenses, 25% to restaurants, 15% to entertainment, and 2% to savings. Since the target was achieved only by 3%, a decision was made to cut other budget items. Thus, there are no clear limits on expenses, as in the traditional budget, but everyone understands that they need to spend less on restaurants and entertainment. Next month, you can review the results again, see how the money was spent this time, and make the necessary adjustments.
Conclusion
An anti-budget should not be a substitute for a regular budget. If you are constantly struggling to make ends meet, you should draw up a regular financial plan to the nearest cent because the anti-budget gives you too much freedom. You need micro-level knowledge to make better decisions. However, as soon as the financial problems are in the past, you can go from the macro-level to the anti-budget. In the author’s family of this article, both methods are used. A thorough study of finance at the micro-level allows the author to reduce costs for those items he defines at the macro level, and the general situation at this level is visible.
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