#MoneyMondays: Budgeting Sustainability
When you hear the words, "Budgeting Sustainability" what comes to mind? When I hear these words, I think:
Sustainability over a long-term time period
A healthy and holistic approach to managing personal finances
The ability to live a life still filled with variety and hope for the future
Budgeting Sustainability means just that: to be able to manage our long-term finances in a healthy and holistic way that lends itself to a life with variety, creativity, positivity and hope for the future.
Budgeting can be serious, no fun, and overall, feel restricting. However, when done right, budgeting is a tool that helps and supports us in creating the lives we've always dreamed and envisioned for ourselves.
Overall, budgeting is way for us to meet our present and long-term financial goals while still living a life that is authentic and true to us within allocated paremeters. When we reflect on our abilities as human beings, we all have limitations and restrictions to what we can do and accomplish as people are not great at everything in life. We all have our skills, capabilities, personalities and values. A great budget will still allow us to be all these things and live a life that is still true and authentic to us when it is sustainable. How do we do this? With a fun budget, for example.
But Filipina Budget Girl! What is a "Fun Budget"? It means that we incorporate fun money into our budget. This doesn't have to be an extravagant or lofty budget, just enough to cover our needs for SOME fun and excitement in our lives. For example, the fun budget could cover movie tickets for yourself and a loved one this week, or a treat at your favourite coffee shop one day before work, or maybe you're saving for a bigger "Fun Goal" such as going on a trip or adventure. Here we would incorporate Sinking Funds to save for that bigger "Fun Goal" that requires a larger budget and allocation of money.
If you'd like to learn more about Sinking Funds and how these can be incorporated into your life, feel free to call up my best friend, Alison and she will explain how these work! Just kidding! But in all honesty, she has always been great at using Sinking Funds, whereas I only use them for budgeting categories such as Vacation(s) or our Wedding Fund.
If you'd like to learn more about Sinking Funds, tune in to the blog next week where we will discuss Sinking Funds further. Hope you enjoyed today's post on Budgeting Sustainability and how this can be incorporated into your budgeting system to create a more fulfilling and happy life while on the journey to meeting and exceeding our financial goals. Signed, Filipina Budget Girl.
