I get it completely. I mean who likes to do budget and follow through each month. You have been told to do budget so that you can be financially independent. You have the intention to follow a budget, but you just struggle.

Today I will try to find out what are the challenges and how to overcome it.

If you know your challenges you can plan to overcome those challenges. I believe budgeting is important to get the most of your income. It shouldn’t be neglected just because you have few challenges.

A budget is the allocation of your earning or income in some categories of expenses and savings plans. Budgeting is essential for every person from a housewife to a manager a company. Any person who earns and spends money should fall in this category, even students.

Budget can be addressed as a universal thing that is a need for all of us, and we don’t know that.

Making a budget is easy, to be honest. Even a newbie can make a budget quickly if he/she knows how to make a budget. But every person faces some difficulties while making a budget for themselves. I bet you do as well face problems when you step in to make a budget. So, what are the challenges, and how can you overcome them? Are they going to get solved by themselves? Obviously, no! You need to know the way outs from the challenges.

This article discusses these, and you will get to know the challenges of making a budget and the ways to overcome the challenges to make a budget. The thirteen challenges faced by almost every budget maker will be mentioned here and the way outs from these as well. The guidelines for challenges and the solutions of them are given below—

1. No basic knowledge:

The biggest challenge everyone faces is not knowing the basic things about budgeting. Before starting anything, you should always know the essential traits of that thing and know how it works.

If you do not do so, then you can’t master the task.

To know budgeting, you can read articles and watch YouTube videos. You can get clear idea of budgeting benefits. I have also written an article on budgeting. You can check out.

Once you have all the explanations to your fundamental questions, then you are prepared to follow a budget. Slowly, you will be creating a path towards financial freedom.

1. Patience:

When you start to make a budget, you must have patience and self-control. Can you lose weight in one day? Can you become healthy by eating nutritious food for only one day? No, right?

So, how do you expect to make a perfect budget in the first month and follow it continuously.

And, being a newbie in budgeting, thinking of the best outcome at once is quite impossible. Your desire and will not make you a perfect budgeter without struggle.

What you need is patience.

Budgeting is not a paltry task, and there are no shortcuts in it. It is one of the reasons people bail out on both exercising and budgeting.

Patience is needed to succeed.

You must diligently do the budgeting each month. Patience is the key here.

1. Time-consuming:

The truth is budgeting takes some time in the beginning.

Even though it will take your time to budget, but never assume that you are wasting your time.

While creating a budget, you must calculate the total income, then the savings amount, expenses etc. Then you do few calculations to create the budget.

It would be best if you think what the obstacles might be in following your budget.

If you spend some time today to create the budget, ultimately, it will save you in future.

After some time, budgeting will be effortless. You may prepare the layout for your budget for the first time. Make the layout feasible and easy to change so that you can use that one layout every month.

This will allow you to create the budget in less time. Even you can use a spreadsheet to maintain your budget.

This will allow you to make the budget clean and neat, and you can modify and change the budget any time without any hassle.

Some tools of automating budgeting will allow you to use functions and formulae on your budget, which may save you time.

1. Emergency expenses:

A room for emergency expenses is essential but ignored.

Even you will agree on this note, won’t you?

When it comes to emergency expenses, many people simply turn a blind eye while preparing a budget.

You might be happy about your savings account, so naturally you think that you do not need an emergency expenses section in the budget.

This idea is outright wrong.

Every budgeter should include an emergency expense. And you may get confused about how much money should you allocate here?

Well, 2% – 5% of your total income can go towards emergency fund.

And, if you struggle to allocate amounts towards emergency, you can rethink about your budget.

Just make sure that you keep at least $1,000-$2,000 for your emergency needs.

1. Irregular income:

Budgeting becomes more demanding when your income is irregular. You always need to fix the money at a new rate for every month.

This is a hassle and challenge for them who have irregular income. Even they do not like to keep a budget for this reason.

They spend the money when they get it and fail to save money for future endeavours.

Is there any solution to these problems?

To overcome, you can follow my technique.

I would suggest you divide your expenses into two sections called constant and variable.

Constant will include the expenses that are fixed like House rent, mortgage fees.

And variable will include the expenses that change with time like food, transportation cost, wants and desires.

But why am I asking you to do so?

Because when you have an irregular income, you can maintain a percentage method to allocate the costs.

First, exclude your ongoing expenses from the income amount and then allocate the rest of your money in the form of a percentage.

Like for food, you will give 40% of your money, for transportation you will give 10% of your money. By doing so, you can save time and allocate the money in different expense areas.

1. Paying in cash:

Many people are not sure about paying in cash. Maybe you are also one of them. Nowadays, people prefer to use cards and bank balance for payment works and not cash.

You may feel insecure about carrying cash. You think that your cash may get stolen or carrying cash is a hassle. But is it so? Let’s question the new standard payment system.

When you carry a debit card or credit card mane make the payment using them, do you give it a second thought?

Do you think that if the purchase is worth spending money or not? You do not, I bet.

So, you see there is a problem with carrying cards instead of carrying cash. But paying in cash may seem hard for you as cash is more challenging to handle than cards.

For that, I do have a solution for you. You may carry the cash that you need with you.

Do not carry extra cash in your bag or purse. Excess cash will lead you towards purchasing without thinking. And if you follow this method, then you will have less cash to manage, and it would not be a problem for you to pay in cash.

1. All or nothing mentality:

Whenever you start to give rise to a budget, the first mistake that you do is that you have an all or nothing mentality.

You think of applying all the rules and following all the things. You want to save more money, get more desires, you want to handle and control all the things.

At the end of the day, nothing happens. Overdoing a task is a big mistake. You can not expect to start playing football and becoming an expert like Messi or Ronaldo the other day.

It would be best if you keep in mind that you would not become an expert in one day or end up getting all positive outcomes from the budget at the very first try.

So be happy and satisfied with what you get and get the ball rolling no matter how hard things get.

Do not chase for perfection or expect to get all the benefits instantly. Wait for some time to get used to satisfaction.

All or nothing mentality of yours may lead you towards depression and uncertainties.

1. Your partner:

You do not live alone. You do have a family, life partner, children, parents, and friends. If you change the way of your living, it will eventually impact their lives.

So, maintaining a budget may seem difficult for you.

If your spouse or partner doesn’t support you in making a budget, budgeting becomes challenging. So, what can you do in such a moment?

It would be best if you prioritise things then have a chat with your partner about the budget.

Try to pitch the benefits of budget, hopefully, they will get convinced.

If they get convinced that they will support you, then this is a piece of good news for you.

In case of denial, then you need to maintain the budget for your own financial independence.

Because if you are not prepared for your future and do not follow the rules to achieve your financial goals, you will struggle to achieve your financial freedom. Not them.

1. Missing the fun in life:

Following a budget is not a fun always. It would require you to make some sacrifices.

Often, you need to give up your luxuries and extra expenses which used to provide you with pleasure and good feeling.

You feel like you are missing the fun in your life that you used to have when you didn’t have a budget to follow.

This may bother you sometimes and make you feel like giving up on things. This feeling is an obvious thing as you will have a 360° turn in your life.

Whenever you feel this way, do remember one thing that making a budget does not mean that you need to cut off all your wants and then stand by them.

No, this is not what a budget is all about. I have discussed 50/ 30/ 20 rules, then you should know that 30% of your fund is assigned here for your wants and desires.

Your wishes will not be unfulfilled. You will get the fun you need in your life, but the difference is that this time the fun will be limited and in control.

Also, if you do not make such a small sacrifice for now, how you can expect to have a good life ahead.

Future planning is essential to make and can not be ignored at all.

1. Maintaining consistency:

While making a budget, the most heard and most challenging work is to maintain the consistency of your work. Not everyone can do this.

Maintaining a work with consistency can be considered an art, and not everyone is an artist.

Making a budget is the first step of the endeavour, and the primary and utmost part is to maintain the work and to do it regularly.

I am not saying that this will be easy. This is going to be hard, and you will need to have a passion for achieving the goal.

The trick that may help you with your consistency of work is, having the passion for your work and make the steps of budgeting a pleasure to yourself.

Make new habits and new likes. If you can not change your task and do not like it as well, but it is a must for you to do.

Then the only option left for you is to love the task you are assigned to do. Change your perspective towards budgeting and make budgeting easier to do and fun to make.

Your brain thinks the way you want to make it think.

1. Missing out holidays and occasion celebration:

Who doesn’t like holidays! Everyone waits for holidays to come and try to enjoy it in a fun and exciting way.

But many budget makers think that budgeting will make them miss out on their holidays and occasion celebration.

Now let me ask you a question. Where have you found that you can not have fun on holidays, or you will have to miss out your occasions and stay home? Does any person suggest that? Has anyone told you to do so?

Ok, if someone has then just ignore their advice and if no one has told you anything related to this then get this thought out of your mind.

Always remember budgeting will make your life more beautiful and easier.

And this does not mean that you must give up all your fun activities and skip the happiness of your life.

If you are not happy, making a budget will not make you happy in future as well.

So, prepare your budget in such a may that would not cut off any of the holidays and occasions that you wish to celebrate.

Make your holidays and occasions cheaper but happier and do not just avoid happiness.

1. Traditional habits change:

When you start to put together a budget, you change your life in a 180° angel. Things become unfamiliar with you, and a rapid change is witnessed with time passing through and making things easier.

You start to change your traditional habits and start adopting habits that will compliment your budget.

Making a budget makes you think and feel different in every angle. Your life becomes upside down, and you feel like you are a changed person now. A better person will be the right phrase to make the call.

And I would agree that changing your habits quickly is challenging. Learn to love change.

Adapt the new version of yours and love the way you are improving. Take the changing phrase of your life as development and make space for the opportunities.

If change is for good, embrace the new habits. Think about why you started with the concept of your budget and what your dream is.

Make sure that you are motivated and enthusiastic throughout the journey of change.

1. Dealing boredom and feeling lonely.

Okay, now let’s look at unusual thing.

You might feel that budget is boring, and don’t want to make one. At one point, you might realise that you are missing out too much from life. It could be eating out with friends. Buying expensive gift for your partner.

That is why its important to downsize your costs rather than eliminate it completely.

You can still enjoy your Netflix or Amazon Prime with your friends and family to spend some quality time with them. But after creating a budget, you can enjoy a meal with them at home rather than at an expensive restaurant.

Don’t become harsh on all your desires and wants. It will seem like a punishment to you, not an improvement.

Just go to a cheaper place than you used to go before. Mention to your friends that you won’t go to expensive places for party due to budgeting.

Your friends will understand and appreciate your budgeting. Do not cut down all your entertainment sectors at once. Keep some of them to enjoy life and skip boredom. Spending your time with your family and friends will not make you feel lonely.

Conclusion:

So, now you know the challenges of making a budget and know the way outs by using which steps you can make an efficient and effective budget for yourself.

The reasons why you need to know these are that when you face challenges while making a budget or doing my kind of work, you feel like skipping it and moving to another thing.

You become frustrated and skip the work there without finishing the work. And this will lead you towards a life without a budget again.

So, I would strongly recommend to you to know the challenges first. It will make you mindful towards budgeting.

The main idea was to make you careful about budgeting challenges.

Now, you know the challenges. So, don’t stop creating a budget and make it worthwhile towards your life.