{"id":132,"date":"2025-10-27T20:30:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T03:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/?p=132"},"modified":"2025-10-27T20:30:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T03:30:29","slug":"money-mondaybudget-is-not-a-four-letter-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/?p=132","title":{"rendered":"Money Monday:Budget is not a four letter word"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Before we even get to the &#8220;how-tos&#8221; let&#8217;s talk about the &#8220;whys&#8221; of budgeting. A lot of people feel like budgets are these restrictive punishments telling them how they have to spend their money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I personally see a budget as a way is to give you control over your money and the ability to make the choice where it goes, rather than just leaving it to chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A budget is where you plan what happens to your money. Yes, some of it has to go to necessities: food, rent, gas (and I would argue retirement and healthcare go here). But if you have a budget, you also get to plan what to do with what&#8217;s left. You get to dream, to set goals, and to plan your own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Do you want to travel? Plan on the extra going to a small travel budget.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do you want to pay off all your debt? Plan on the extra going towards that?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do you want to save for a house? College? A new car? Then funnel your excess that way.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do you want to ??? anything??? This is where you get to decide.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>But until you know what you are spending on necessities, and you don&#8217;t even know how much is really left, you can&#8217;t start to put your mind to what to do with the rest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, if you&#8217;re like <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/25-americans-still-don-t-100000276.html\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/25-americans-still-don-t-100000276.html\">20% of Americans<\/a>, you don&#8217;t have a budget at all. You don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s coming in, where it&#8217;s going or where you&#8217;re leaking money. That&#8217;s why you budget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that you have control over your own money &#8211; and YOU get to decide where it goes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before we even get to the &#8220;how-tos&#8221; let&#8217;s talk about the &#8220;whys&#8221; of budgeting. A lot of people feel like budgets are these restrictive punishments telling them how they have to spend their money. I personally see a budget as a way is to give you control over your money and the ability to make [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}