Tired of trying to figure out your expenses at the end of the month?
Are you scrabbling around your home trying to find receipts so that you can calculate where your money went this month?
You don’t have to do that anymore, you just need 15 minutes a day to budget successfully!
Continue reading to find out how!
*This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product, I receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). I don’t recommend products that I don’t love!
*Click here to join my FREE budget TRAINING* LIMITED SPOTS⠀
You’ll learn:⠀⠀
✅ My signature step-by-step method on how to build your budget that’s helped over 3,000 women build their budget (with specific examples!)⠀
✅ The biggest mistake hard-time working women make with their paychecks & why you still don’t have a working budget (even if you’re starting at zero!)
✅ Why every budget you’ve tried doesn’t work & how my strategies will
Now, let’s look at how you can budget for only 15 minutes a day 👇🏼
Step 1: Look at your Budget Calendar
The first thing you want to do as soon as you wake up in the morning is look at your budget calendar; this is your map, so it is absolutely necessary!
As soon as you look at this, you know exactly what is happening today. By this, I mean:
- Bill payments
- Paydays
- Events
- Birthdays
- Holidays
What if I don’t have a Budget Calendar?
I’m gonna tell you right now that this isn’t just a regular calendar, this is your guide to organizing your finances; it will keep track of every single bill and paycheck you pay and receive, respectively.
I can guarantee you that you’ve probably had a bill that you’ve completely forgotten about, we’ve all been there.
Using a budget calendar will help you plan in advance so that you stay on top of your finances rather than drowning in your bills.
I’m gonna show you exactly how to start a budget calendar right here and right now. Ready?
Grab an empty calendar.
You can make one if you don’t have one: grab 2 empty sheets of paper, sketch out two 7×5 tables (7 horizontal & 5 vertical) and write out this month and next month just like the picture below.
Next, determine your monthly/biweekly/weekly paycheck. If your paycheck is different every single time, write down the total of the lowest paycheck that you’ve received.
Write PAYDAY on your calendar whatever day(s) it falls on. This is your income.
Now, write out ALL of your bills on their due dates.
If you don’t remember all of them, go through your last 3 bank statements, these will show your reoccurring bills. These are your expenses.
I talk about how to budget for beginners in this post, so make sure you read that first if you’re new to budgeting.
Once you’ve made your calendar, hang it up or put it in your budget binder. I want you to be able to put it somewhere visible so that you remember to look at every single day.
By doing this, all you have to do is glance at it in the morning while you’re making your coffee (or matcha latte) and think, “Oh, the electricity bill is coming out of my account today.”
This financial awareness will put you at ease.
This takes me 2 minutes out of the 15 minutes a day.
Let’s move on.
Step 2: Check online banking
Every morning, after looking at my budget calendar, I make sure to look at my bank accounts.
I do this because first, I wanna make sure nothing suspicious is coming out of my account and second, I wanna look at which bills have cleared my account.
This takes me 3 minutes out of my 15 minutes a day.
I say three because my internet is super slow in the morning for some odd reason.
Step 3: Update expense trackers
For every month, I have two expense trackers; one for my checking account and one for my cash spending.
I recommend having an expense tracker for every area that you have money movement.
BTW, you can get a FREE expense tracker by clicking here.
Once a bill clears my checking account, I write it down in my checking account expense tracker. This keeps me aware of the running balance in my checking account.
By doing this every single day, you will know which bills have processed and cleared your account and which bills have yet to be paid.
Do you see how this keeps you in charge of your finances rather than drowning in your debt?
How Do I Track my Cash Envelopes?
For the cash expense tracker, I look at the cash envelope tracker. I use tape to attach these to the back of each of my cash envelopes and write down each expense from the previous day.
For example, I spent $25 on takeout yesterday. So, on my cash envelope tracker, I write down the date of the purchase (yesterday), the transaction (Church Chicken), the category (Food) and the amount ($25).
If you don’t use a cash envelope tracker, just pull out the receipts that you put into your cash envelopes and update your expense tracker that way.
This takes me 5 minutes out of the 15 minutes a day.
Step 4: Update Paycheck Plan
The last thing that I do is pull out my paycheck plan worksheet. If you don’t know what this is, I discuss it in detail in my ‘Why you Need a Zero-Based Budget’ blog post.
If my bank has cleared the bill, I fill in the ‘CLEARED’ column for that bill with the exact amount.
By doing this, I know which bills have come out and which bills are still left to pay for this pay period.
If you want this worksheet, you can get it here.
Now that both my expense trackers and paycheck plan worksheets are updated every single day, I don’t have to sit down at the end of the month (or pay period) and fill in every single expense, which is very tedious by the way.
This takes me 5 minutes out of the 15 minutes a day.
Breakdown of Budgeting 15 minutes a Day:
- Look at budget calendar = 2 minutes
- Check online banking = 3 minutes
- Update expense tracker = 5 minutes
- Update paycheck plan = 5 minutes
- TOTAL = 15 minutes
Have I finally convinced you that you can have a successful budget by only sitting down for 15 minutes a day?
*Click here to join my FREE budget TRAINING*
Try this and let me know in the comments down below how long it took you to update your budget today. I would love to hear from you!
I show you my budget with real numbers on my Instagram regularly, follow me there!
Next, read Amazon on a Budget.