How to avoid “No Strings Attached Budgets”

Have no money to invest in what your business or organization needs the most? This post is part of a productivity series aimed at helping you optimize your budget management.

If you want to save on a budget, you should have a very detailed budget first.

This may seem obvious, but surprisingly many companies don’t have a complete budget written down. Oftentimes, they just have certain budgets, but many of their expenses are typically left floating free without being thoughtfully tied to an actual plan. These sums of money are what I define as “No Strings Attached Budgets”.

How to avoid “No Strings Attached Budgets”

1. Planning
Once you’ve managed to balance your earnings with your spending and savings goals, write down a budget so you’ll know for every month, quarter and/or year how much you can spend on any given category/department/etc. This will significantly help you, especially with expenses that tend to fluctuate, or those that are particularly difficult to restrict.

2. Don’t guess.
Do not try to guess how much you’ll need to spend in a certain area when making your budgets – let’s say in social media expenses, for example. If you haven’t implemented a good plan for certain activities, it might be because you aren’t sure about where to begin. If you have no idea how to budget for a specific activity, then ask someone who is qualified to help you, such as an external professional consultant or agency.

What are the main challenges you face when creating a budget? Share them in the comments below or click here for a quick “comment-ready-tweet” @vascellari.

Andrea

Image Credit: Johnny Vulkan

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