Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
Level up your budget with these eight tips. Take control of your debt, savings, and financial goals for a more secure and rewarding financial future.
Treat your budget like gold because good things come your way if you use it correctly.
If you invest in your budget, the result will be that gold pot at the rainbow’s end.
In this post, I will discuss eight ways your budget will benefit from simple tasks.
Perhaps using this as a refresher might add something new to your budget for those who already use a budget.
- What would you like to see happen with your budget? Goals come to mind.
- Who do you owe a debt to? What is your interest rate? What is your monthly minimum balance? What is your total debt?
- Does your emergency savings need to be topped up or started?
- How can you earn more income for your budget to pay off more debt?
- What areas of your budget need improvement?
- Is your budget realistic?
- What expenses are costing you the most and why?
- Things your budget can live without
- Create your budget binder by visiting my Free Resources page.
Plan Your Budget For Success
Planning your budget is only one step in paving the way to debt freedom.
This is the right time to start planning your budget for the new year, as you can work on it slowly.
If you are new to budgeting, you must collect data and develop a realistic action plan.
I hope our actions inspire you or your family to consider budgeting, even if it’s a basic budget.
Do not fear budgets, fear living on the streets, fear having all of your stuff taken away.
That might be hard to hear, but it’s real, and some of you may have already experienced the hell outside of losing everything you own.
A budget may not save you, but it will put you on track to paying off debt and paving a path.
Start Your Budget By Note-Taking
This is funny because Mrs. CBB and I have a piece of blank paper to start.
By the end of the hour of conversation on the above questions, both sides are filled out.
There are even notes on the sidelines, but that’s how your budget comes to life.
When I created the Canadian Budget Binder, I used a note-taking method called mind mapping.
This note-taking style is when you use a web of ideas to create your whole.
As you can see above, it’s pretty basic; however, all the thoughts in my head had a home.
Trust me, this one piece of paper has taken me on a 10-year journey that I could write a book.
Types Of Note-Taking Ideas For Your Budget
There are five common types of note-taking that you can use to create notes for your budget for 2022.
- The Cornell Method
- The Outlining Method
- The Mapping Method (this is us)
- The Charting Method
- The Sentence Method
You can find descriptions for each note-taking method at the University of Tennessee website.
Perhaps you have used one or all of these note-taking methods in college, university or for your employer.
From the start of this blog in 2012, almost ten years ago, I’ve always said that your budget is your business. Treat it like one.
That means you can’t chuck it to the side because you’re too busy or don’t feel you need one.
Everyone needs a budget, whether they want to believe it or not.
What Goals Do You Have For Your Budget
Start the brainstorming session once you’ve decided what type of notes you will take for your budget.
As mentioned, we start with the goals because we always find a budget category that we are horrible with.
There are no bloggers out there who are perfect at what they do, and we are transparent.
We suck at grocery shopping, and that’s not surprising to anyone at CBB unless you’re new.
Our first grocery budget was around $250 before our son was born.
After that, it kept increasing, not because he was overeating, but because we were.
I will not blame the pandemic on our ever-increasing monthly grocery budget of $650.
That’s why we created the Monthly Budget Binder Challenge two years ago.
The challenge helps us know that other CBB readers are participating with us.
You can read more about the Monthly Budget Challenge to see if you want to join us.
It’s a free challenge.
Grocery Budget Goals
Sticking to a grocery budget is tricky unless it’s the last option. I understand that since we’ve both experienced food struggles.
We have this problem, especially since we are debt-free and don’t want it to get out of control.
- Go to Costco and get ONLY what’s on the list with NO exceptions. Oh, look, honey, the nuts are on sale. NO! Haha. That’s our downfall. The other option is to use our allowance to spend how we like.
- Grocery shopping together rather than splitting up like we always do
- Create better meal plans according to our busy schedule. Note: Do away with UBER eats and other pricey food delivery services. However, if that’s your entire grocery budget and it works for you, that’s your choice.
- Please resist the temptation of pleasing our son with treats too often.
- Utilize the reduced rack – for example, we had a bag of mixed-colored peppers in our shopping cart yesterday for $3.99. After a short walk up the aisle, we noticed two white carts filled with reduced produce. Sure enough, there were packages of four green peppers for $1.49, so we swapped them out.
- Eat less, buy less, and walk and work out more.- When we stay home, we snack too much.
- Stop buying or baking snacks unless it’s for the blog.
- Continue using online apps such as FlashFood to grab food deals at the grocery store. The app is so excellent. Use my unique code, MOCD28ZN4, at the checkout, and when you make your first purchase, you get $5 in rewards, and so do I. Then, you go on to share your unique code with your friends. In 2021, we earned $112.00 with the new app. That’s money we can use to purchase the app’s final sale or reduced product. We have seen items with a 50-70% discount. Woah…is right. Download the app FlashFood on Apple or Android. You can read more about it from my FlashFood app review.
Costs For Blog Recipes
Remember that the recipes I share with you on the blog have ingredients factored into our grocery budget.
I only share two recipes a month, but it is a blog expense; however, I understand you can’t claim it.
As you can see, we have many grocery shopping goals.
Your budget will differ based on family size, special diets, etc.
Collect Your Debt By Owning It
We no longer have debt but collect your debt for those who want freedom as badly as we do.
Owning your debt means you will take responsibility no matter who created it.
If your name is on the debt, you may be liable to pay for it or face debt collectors calling or knocking on your door.
Related: Can you inherit debt after the death of a loved one?
If you’re not organized with your financial paperwork, start with a piece of paper and write down who you owe money to each month.
Check our free budget binder printables for the debt repayment plan and fill in the information on that form.
Expenses Ruining Your Budget
Go through your 2021 monthly budgets, credit card bills, or receipts and find out what’s ruining your budget.
- Could it be your utilities?
- Are you spending too much on groceries?
- Maybe you are eating out too much?
- Are you joining to do extra-curricular sports or activities?
- Perhaps your alcohol or drug consumption is too high. (marijuana is legal in Canada)
There has to be a reason you cannot balance a budget; all you can do is reduce, earn more money, or delete items.
We use a zero-based budget, meaning every dollar we have is used in our budget.
Things Your Budget Can Live Without
In 2021, Mrs. CBB and I decided to stop paying for our Rogers Home Phone and our Rogers Cable.
You know what? We don’t miss them at all, and the savings are fantastic.
We watch videos on YouTube and our Prime movies that come with our Amazon Prime Membership.
The internet allows us to read the current news about anything we want to watch.
Our Rogers unlimited internet costs us $99 monthly with taxes, and we’re okay with that.
The savings we get go towards our retirement investments and emergency savings.
Emergency Savings Is An Emergency
An emergency savings account is for emergencies. I had a great example when my mother-in-law had to be transferred home from one hospital to another.
The transfer cost was over $400, which we had to pull from her savings account.
Another example might be when you must fly home because of a family death.
Thankfully, that hasn’t happened to me, but if all three of us have to fly to the U.K., that will cost thousands.
Every finance blogger has different amounts to save for emergency savings, but we aim for 12 months.
The reason is the potential to fly to England, but 3 to 6 months is reasonable.
Ways You Can Earn Extra Income For Your Budget
My favorite part of planning our budget is finding ways to earn extra money without doing much work.
For example, Canadian Budget Binder earns me a 5-figure income yearly, but will it last forever?
Learn how to blog and earn monthly money from affiliate marketing, ads, sponsored posts, and more.
We participate in local focus groups and use every app we can to save money.
Our favourite apps to earn extra money are Rakuten, Checkout51, FlashFood, Nielsen Homescan, Pinecone research, Paymi, and Caddle.
You can sign up for them all on the extra income and savings page.
You will also find reviews of many websites and apps we use. I haven’t finished them all yet, but I will get to it.
- How To Start A Blog Resources
- How I Made My First $1000 Blogging
- 6 Lucrative Ways Bloggers Earn Money
- What To Consider When Starting A Blog In Canada
- 8 Blogging Mistakes I Made And Lost Income
The blogging series is in the beginning stages, but there’s already lots to read.
Blogging is a great way to earn passive income if you want to work from home.
There are other ways, such as freelancing, Etsy store, writing an e-book, working for a blog, taking care of their social media accounts, writing blog posts, or designing blogs.
Other ways to earn extra money from home or pay for outside cash jobs could be dog walking, animal babysitting, daycare, yard work, or before and after school care.
Our other favourite ways to earn money are to flip items we buy at second-hand stores.
I’ve repurposed furniture and sold it for double the price it cost me or more.
Putting Your New Budget Together
Now, you have the information to organize your budget for the new year.
Head to my Free Resources page to see if a free budget suits your needs.
If you have a budgeting app that you prefer to use, then make that your budget priority.
That’s hard for most people because starting is half the battle.
You must set up a time and date to monitor the budget.
I’d suggest reading my 10-Step Mini-Budgeting Series to show you how we budgeted our debt away.
P.S. Using a budget is not torture; living with nothing is beyond words.
Remember, you’re giving up something to have something that keeps a roof over your head, food on the table, clothes, and the bills paid on time.
Discussion: How do you plan your budget?
Please share your thoughts and ideas below, as I’m always interested in your feedback and experiences.
Thanks for reading,
Mr.CBB