5 Things You Can Do to Stick to Your Budget

A good budget is the key to building positive spending habits, staying out of debt, and saving money. Of course, even the best budget is only as effective as your ability to stick with the plan.

All too often, we try to justify spending money better used elsewhere and making unplanned purchases. We figure that we’ll work it out in the budget later, only to then have to make purchases on credit later in the month or make smaller debt repayments then we’d planned.

Avoiding these situations requires seeing the budget all the way through to the end of the month. But how do you stick with a budget? In this article, we’ll explore a number of ways to help you follow your budget down to the last dollar.

1. Don’t Make Impulse Buys

Avoiding impulse buys is one of the single, most-effective ways to stick with a budget. Of course, the problem with impulse buys is resisting the urge to make the purchase in the first place.

Anytime you find yourself about to pull the trigger on an impulse buy, the best thing to do is to take a step back and, if possible, sleep on it. This will give you plenty of time to determine if you really do need the item and for any marketing pressure to wear off. “Fear of missing out” (FOMO) is a very real thing used to great effect by marketers, and sometimes a little distance is all it takes to think clearly about a potential purchase.

If you do decide that you need the item in question, you can use this time to determine the best way to work it into the budget. For example, it might be that waiting until next month allows you to appropriately account for the cost and avoid busting your budget this month.

2. Budget for the Little Things

Coffees, snacks, movie tickets . . . the average person has a wide variety of little purchases they make every month that aren’t accounted for in their budget. When you add all these little purchases up, they likely account for a surprising amount of money that wasn’t considered in the budget.

Do the coffees and snacks then come out of the grocery budget? Do the movie tickets get added into the entertainment budget even though they were unexpected? It’s a fact that little purchases can bust your budget if you aren’t careful.

Instead, it makes more sense to anticipate these small purchases and account for them in your budget. Once the coffees and snacks are added into the expected grocery expenses, you have to decide if that dollar amount is still acceptable.

By budgeting for the little things, you’re being honest with yourself about your true spending habits. If you only have room for $250 per week in groceries, and a daily coffee would push that number to $275 per week, then you need to find a way to make that work in the budget or cut the daily coffee.

3. Treat Credit Cards Like Real Money

Credit cards are great in that they give us additional capital to work with, and many also provide excellent rewards. However, it can be easy to forget that when you use a credit card, you’re using real money that you don’t yet have.

The key to smart credit card usage is treating your credit card like real money. Whenever you use your card, you should have a plan for how you’re going to pay the balance down within a reasonable time frame. If you don’t, your balance can get out of hand surprisingly quickly.

When you treat your credit card like real money, you don’t make budget problems for yourself down the road. Instead, you have a good idea of when and how you’ll pay it off.

4. Take Up Meal Planning

Between eating out, snacks, and grocery store impulse buys, food is an easy thing to spend more money on than intended. Meal planning is a great way to avoid this, and it can have the added bonus of eating healthier, as well!

When planning your meals, decide exactly what you’re going to eat for each meal throughout the week, then buy exactly what is needed from the grocery store. You can even take this a step further and prepare snacks ahead of time.

Meal planning is a great way to control how much you spend on food, which allows you to prevent your grocery and dining out bills from breaking your budget.

5. Set Up Auto Pay for Essential Bills

Setting up automatic payments for your bills can be a huge help to any budget. You want to make sure that your money gets spent on needs and obligations before any discretionary spending takes place. By properly setting up automatic payments, you can ensure that your bills get paid on time as soon as the money becomes available.

Auto pay prevents you from being tempted into an impulse buy or forgetting that you haven’t paid X bill yet, which leaves your budget with a shortfall. The key to successful automatic payments is to schedule them to pay after you’ve received your paycheck in your checking account. However, enrolling in auto pay in your payees’ system often means that you simply get charged whenever the next bill is ready. If you instead set up your automatic payments within your online banking account, you’ll often have greater control over your payment dates. This ensures the money doesn’t come out of your account until after you’ve received your paycheck, keeping your monthly budget on track.

Review and Adjust Your Budget Regularly

If you follow all of these tips and find that you still have trouble sticking to your budget, it might be that your budget needs to be adjusted to work with your financial situation. You should review your budget on at least a monthly basis. This gives you the opportunity to determine where your budget is falling short and how you can adjust your spending to make it work.

It's important to remember that a budget only works if your expenses don’t exceed your income. If you find that your budget isn’t working for you, just take a step back and take some time to objectively review your cashflow and expenses. A willingness to make necessary adjustments to a budget is key to sticking with it. This budgeting calculator can help you identify where your budget might be coming up short.

With the Right Tools and Accounts, You Can Stick to Your Budget

At Hancock Whitney, we believe in helping our communities succeed and reach their financial goals. To this end, we offer a wealth of free financial literacy articles.

Talk to one of our bankers today to learn more about how our checking and savings accounts can help you stick with your budget, with features like Early Pay, overdraft protection, and mobile app budgeting tools.