You Are Already Managing Cash Flow…Why Not Be Intentional?

I do not care if you have a budget or not, you are already managing your cash flow. You have income coming in and you are spending some or all of that. A budget simply adds intentionality to your income and expenses.

I don’t meet many people who enjoy creating and managing a budget. I do meet A LOT of people who see the value of a budget but are scared away by it’s complexity and/or their past experiences. Being a nerdy financial planner, I have tried many different budgeting tools. I’m only going to talk about ONE.

Here are 3 tips to keep in mind:

1. There are a total of ZERO budgeting tools that will do this job for you 100%. It takes some effort to create and manage a budget no matter how slick the software is.
2. Automate EVERYTHING possible (utilities, mortgage, bills, lumpy expenses, etc)
3. Like other important areas of life, this is a habit that will need to be established

The tool I recommend is EveryDollar. Here’s why:

• It’s simple
• You set up a budget
• Throughout the month, you DRAG your expenses into the appropriate categories (extremely easy)
• You can always see where you stand
• There is a free version but I highly recommend EveryDollar Plus which costs $100 / year. The Plus version links to your bank account and automatically downloads your transactions.

Whether you make $50,000 or $500,000, telling your money where to go is step 1 to every financial plan.