The Money Makeover : Tip #1 – The Budget Calendar

 

Here’s a little tip that I thought I would share. One of the key things with our money makeover is to avoid surprises. We do this in a number of ways, we create a new budget each month, we have our emergency fund 1 and allocate savings for upcoming/possible events.

However, I still found I was getting caught out – why? Because it’s very easy to just plain forget about events that aren’t as big as Christmas or the next vacation. There are also instances when you get those sneaky 5-week months and you forget to budget an extra weeks groceries and whatnot.

So how do we normally remember such events? Well duh, a calendar!

Overview

Here’s what I do:

• Create a new calendar called “Budgeting” on Google* (see below for instructions).
• Add all recurring financial events, whether it’s things coming off of a credit card, direct debits, travel costs or whatever. Using a digital calendar normally makes this very easy and with most of the options we would require for financial stuff out of the box (e.g. “repeat X times” or “repeat until Y”)
• When doing your monthly budget, you can then see at a glance exactly when money is going to be coming out of your account and when.
• While budgeting it is then easy to also see when other events are occurring in your life that might require some cash – for example, Joe’s birthday, a gig or that it’s international talk like a pirate day and you need to buy an eye patch.
• When adding any upcoming personal events, think about the financial implications and also add those to your budgeting calendar.

* I recommend Google because it’s free, its easy, it has a nice UI and you can sync with most mobile devices. But, you can obviously use whatever you like – you can never beat good old pen-and-paper!

Creating a New Calendar on Google

• “Settings”
• “Calendar Settings”
• “Calendars”
• “Create new calendar”

So there you have it. Create a budgeting calendar, make your monthly budget easier and quicker to create and have less financial surprises!

One other point to note..

Make sure you keep the calendar private ;)

• Open your Google calendar.
• Click “Settings”
• Click “Calendars”
• Calendars are private by default, you can double check via:
  • “Settings”
  • “Calendar Settings”
  • “Calendars”
  • “Budgeting” (or your name)
  • “Share This Calendar”
  • Ensure “Make this calendar public” is unchecked.