Teach A Friend

A budget to me is an organized way to take care of everyone and everything that is important to you.

Mom said that a budget also divides our needs from our wants.

I then asked Mom questions about dealing with unexpected expenses, unexpected income, how to check your budget progress, dealing with impulse buying, and how to make budgeting seem like less of a waste of personal time.

In terms of unexpected expenses, Mom said that one can save or earmark a certain amount of income when one is doing well financially so that there will be money readily available when a need for money comes up unexpectedly. When it comes to unexpected income, Mom said that after paying tithing and offerings, you can maybe pay a month ahead on some bills and also put money away for a rainy day. Just because you have extra money doesn't mean you have to spend it all on frivolities all the time.

When it comes to checking budget progress, Mom said the best thing to do is to keep running totals of everything and she finds it awesome to learn things about finances, as she is currently studying the accounting portion of the Office Essentials course she is taking at vocational school. In terms of dealing with impulse buying, Mom said that one needs to stick to their pre-planned budget first and foremost and if there is any extra money, a special account should be made for the extra money and it can be saved up for something that is really wanted later on.

Mom said that when it comes to people finding that budgeting takes too much time, maybe they also need to budget their time a little more wiser than they do. If people have an hour or two to do frivolous things like Facebook, Mom said they have an hour or two to sit down and make a budget.

I then asked Mom how goal setting is useful when it comes to personal financial management and she said that one will spend their money stupidly if they don't have clear direction for it, as we know where our money needs to go and we need to make sure it actually gets where it needs to go.

After that, I read a quote by President Monson that said, "When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates."

I then explained that the parable of the talents found in Matthew 25 explains that the Lord gives all of us opportunity to learn, expand on what we are given, or refine what needs refining. If we make the most of a few blessings by faithfully enduring and cherishing them for what they are by using them, we will be given many blessings. If, however, we do not make the most of what we have, we shall lose our smaller blessings for not using what we were given when we were given it.

I then asked Mom what her insights were about financial management when it came to the parable of the talents and how we could apply insights about it to our lives.

Mom said that the bottom line is that if after you take care of your needs, you blow your money on momentary pleasure, you won't have anything available for lasting pleasures when the opportunity to have them comes along. In terms of applying our insights about the parable of the talents to our lives, Mom said that by following our budget, maybe we will end up having to adjust our wants because our needs obviously come first. Even if we pay tithes and everything else first, if we are then frivolous, we can't really expect to receive the blessings that paying a full and honest tithing will bring into our lives.

I concluded by saying that God knows we are capable of anything, we just have to believe in ourselves enough to do something about it. In order to succeed, we have to want to discover and expand upon the abilities we have been given by God and we do that by carefully balancing our needs and our wants into priorities and also remembering that the things we do are not as important as the attitude with which we get things done.