Baby Steps to Better Financial Health

I began “budgeting” in 2010. I put the word in quotations because, to a hardcore budgeter, what I did wouldn’t look like budgeting at all... Not even close. Today, I am slightly closer to that goal, but I may never be a budgeting savant. I mean, there are some people that don’t spend a single penny they haven’t set aside for budgeting purposes. I don’t quite know how to do that, because it seems like every time I get close, some unexpected expense pops up, or a friend comes up to visit and they want to go to their favorite restaurant, or a new bar. My point is that budgeting is hard.

It doesn’t help that half the literature out there is about how “easy” budgeting is and how all you have to do is the exact thing that seems so impossible to do. I can look back to not very long ago, and think about how I used to handle my finances. That person would look at what I’m doing today and think, “There’s no way I could do that.” Shows what he knows…

The funny thing is that every time I made a slight improvement on my system, I actually had one less thing to worry about. The truth is that worrying about money is exhausting. Ironically, when I spent virtually no time checking my accounts or tracking spending, I felt more stressed out about money than I do now that I am checking my accounts regularly. After all, my money was being spent one way or another, and every time I swiped my card for a sorta-big purchase, every time I got a loan payment notification in the mail, I was reminded.

I will tell you a couple of things that have helped me, but I also want to ask you what you have done, or will do, as far as baby steps go, to improve your financial health.

Small steps I made:

-          Figuring out my regular expenses, and putting money aside into a savings account I don’t touch except in emergencies.

-          Making financial goals to make sure I’m saving up for things I want to be saving up for.

-          Using Debt in Focus to help me make the most of my debt payments and get a financial overview/help me think about good budgets.

-          Making debt repayment a priority

-          Using Credit Karma to track my credit score for free.

-          Refinancing high interest debt with low interest debt.

These steps in and of themselves were pretty small, but they had big impacts, and they helped me get on the path towards keeping a regular budget. Now that I’m budgeting regularly, it feels like just another baby step. Now for more baby steps towards even better financial health!

Help me, and other readers out and share yours now!