Your Spreadsheet that You Never Look at Doesn't Count as a Budget

When I first started "budgeting", I made a generic spreadsheet in excel and put my estimated income and expenses in for a normal month. Then I put the "budget" away and never really looked at it or tracked how well I was following it. I thought I was doing good and I thought I was smart, but the truth is, my budget was a complete waste of time and space on my thumb drive.

What I was doing was similar to how most athletic coaches run practice. If you've been around wrestling, or any sports for that matter, for a significant amount of time, you know that many coaches do not make practice plans. And the the ones that do often use a cookie cutter, basic practice plan template and veer from it whenever they see fit. In other words, they don't really have a practice plan... They are doing slight variations of the same thing every day and just hoping the team gets better.

In my experience, this "hope it works" method of practice planning leads to long, inefficient, and boring practices. And then many coaches wonder why they aren't getting the results they want!

In contrast to this, there are some coaches out there, like my college coach, who sit down and write up a customized, down to the minute practice plan every day and actually follow it. When I was a Grad Assistant Coach, I was in charge of practice planning and I  found out why most people don't do this. It can be a real pain in the butt! It takes discipline and a lot of intentional thought to write up productive, efficient practice plans every single day. There are days when you don't feel like doing it, but you have to do it anyway. And when you do, you get astronomically better results without wasting everyone's time!

Budgeting is the same exact way. In order to get results, you have to write up a customized budget every single month and actually follow it! Having a spreadsheet tucked away on a thumb drive like I did, does nothing for you. You may as well stop wasting your time and not do a budget at all.

Luckily, Rachel and I figured this out within our first couple years of marriage. Now, we sit down before the beginning of every month and go over where every dollar of our income will be going in the coming month. Since we have started doing this, we have been able to pay off all of our student loans as well as save up six months worth of expenses as an "emergency fund". And we are now knee deep in the process of saving for a house.

I know some of this stuff seems intimidating... and it is at first, but just like writing up practice plans for wrestling practice, it gets easier the more you do it. And once you see the results, you never want to go back to the old ways of just hoping you get the results you want.

If you are like I was and you "kind of budget" (code for you don't), and you want to start budgeting for real, the best resource I know of is Dave Ramsey's everydollar budgeting app. It's great for people who aren't weirdo nerds like me, and it absolutely works if you do.