Reflecting on what Jeff Manion wrote on pages 104-06 in his book Satisfied about the importance of writing a journal for life, it gets my attention what he says:
I write.. because I am prone to forget that I am deeply loved by the Father. I reminded myself that I am his. He adopted me, paid for me, and I am his. I am his cherished son. His treasured kid (See p. 105).
In the same way we write our prayers and notes in a journal, calculating a budget in a sheet resembles journal writing. In fact, I would define a budget as a ‘money journal made up of numbers.’
But how did I deal with budget calculations? Well, the steps I made to create a budget were first calculating my income (wages, donations, scholarship), then I calculated my expenses (rent, tuition, bills, credit cards, etc). After this, I checked all the expenses to figure out changes from the previous month. And the last part of the budget-writing was identifying areas where I need to improve. Isn’t this like a journal?
I remember I bought some movies some time ago. Checking my budget for last month in May I realized I was able to cut that expense and save that money. Although it was not a lot of money (probably $50), I believe that taking this step was important while managing my resources.
One key aspect one learns about budgets is that having self-control while having one is not as easy as it seems: a budget requires us to do a lot of effort and control besides following rules accordingly.
Let me finish with this reflection:
In a nutshell: Budget tracking is a powerful means to control our expenses because relying on our will can be deceiving.