Means Business: Why You Should Be Smart With Budgeting

When you hear the phrase, living at or below your means, the wrinkle on your forehead and face shows that isn’t exactly the most enviable place to be in as far as money goes.

That means no hot tub that you can’t afford, no swimming pool that is highly ill-advised financially or skipping a vacation or two because you simply have no savings account to speak of, and your only means is using a credit card.

As unbelievable sad as that sounds that way of thinking (and living) comes from the simple fact that most of us tend to overlook when we’re talking about money: living below our means. Now, living below your means has a negative stigma to it; that phrase doesn’t mean you’ll never have your toes in the water at the beach and the idea of a new car is just one year older than your current used car.

Instead, living below your means is a mindset, an ideology that centers on budgeting, knowing what you make and what you can afford but goes beyond that as well. The “beyond” part means that you not only have a budget that you stick with from one day to the next, but you also plan for the future in a way that is two-fold. That budget allows you to know exactly what you spend so that you can save and have that proverbial nest egg we all strive to have (including the retirement element as well). Less than half of the population has a savings account whatsoever, so building your wealth has to start with forgoing certain purchases or a particular house or car in lieu of not saving.

Planning for the future also affects short term positivity that focuses on living below your means, such as knowing if a spouse loses their job that you’ll be safe to be able to keep up the bills without going into huge amounts of debt or, worse yet, lose your house or car because you’re living two paychecks to paychecks and now must be faced with just one.

You can’t underestimate the stress of it all as well when you’re living and wondering from one month to the next if you have enough money to pay your bills, not even so much thinking about saving. And really when it boils down to it, saving is key. And you can’t do anything remotely close to saving.