Planning and Budgeting to Finish The Year Well

Today is the first Friday that follows the Labor Day holiday. Summer vacations or stay-cations have been had, family cookouts have been hosted, and school has started back for children across the nation. For many of us, our minds turn towards the next season- the last quarter of the year.

Not too Late to Start

If you have not adopted the discipline of budgeting, this is a great time to start. You still have a chance of finishing this year, well. You’ll need to have your basic budget in place before you can move forward with the next steps. See prior posts, Budget Basics (Part 1) and (Part 2) for help with getting started. Create a barebones budget- the absolute least you can spend and still pay everything that needs to be paid on time. This could mean pausing subscriptions for a time, curbing your fast-food budget, spreading your hair appointments out to every six weeks instead of every four weeks, etc. Be realistic. The goal is to free up as much money as possible, but not the way you use to. You aren’t skipping payments, postdating checks, making payment arrangements, or borrowing money from emergency savings, family, or credit cards. For the first time in decades, possibly, you aren’t going into the new year with holiday debt.

Getting Your Tasks in Order

This is September, so you have three months ahead of you and at least two major holidays. Sit down with a notepad, pen, and a highlighter. Write down everything you need to and/or want to do before the end of the year. Purge your thoughts; get it all on paper. Then, accept the fact that you aren’t going to be able to do all those things. Time, energy, money, and other resources just won’t allow it.

Circle the three highest priority tasks; five, if at least a couple of them are small (but important tasks). Write that list of three to five tasks on a separate piece of paper- beginning with the one that has the highest priority. For task #1, begin to back-track from what you need to have done by when, and a realistic timeline to make it happen. Build priority task #2 around it, and then #3, #4, and #5. Draw arrows to shift things around and keep tweaking until you map out a do-able plan. If you can’t make it work, remove #5 from your list and concentrate your efforts in successfully doing the remaining four. Transcribe the final version on to a fresh piece of paper you can hang on the refrigerator, on your mirror in the bathroom or bedroom, or somewhere you can see it daily.

Fitting It in Your Budget

Next, for the purposes of budgeting, look at everything on your list of three to five high priorities and identify everything that requires money (regardless as to how much). This could be decorating your home for the season, hosting Thanksgiving and/or Christmas dinner, buying Christmas presents, traveling out of state for the holiday, or buying a gift for a loved one’s birthday.

Whatever those items are, write them on a fresh piece of paper leaving a nice size chunk of space between each. Under each task, write down the major things needed to complete that task and how much they generally cost. Here are 10 questions to ask yourself.

  1. What items do you already have, can borrow from someone else, or can do without?
  2. What items will you definitely have to spend money on?
  3. Do you have enough surplus money in your budget to move forward with your list?
  4. If not, how much more money do you need?
  5. Is there anything else on your budget that you can cut back on?
  6. Have you been putting money into a sinking fund (savings) for just this reason?
  7. Are you expecting any bonuses from work?
  8. Can you convince the family to host an end-of-the-summer yard sale and get rid of things you all don’t need? You can pull things together and host at the end of that same week, if you’re aggressive.
  9. Is there anything else you (or the family) can do to bring in extra income?
  10. How can you all improvise or use your creativity to lower the cost of your tasks? Maybe you can co-host dinner, make gifts, or borrow decorations or make your own-on the cheap.

Conclusion

The final quarter of the year is just around the corner. Hopefully you’ve been working on a budget, building savings (possibly even sinking funds), and tackling debt. But, regardless as to whether you have been operating on a budget the whole year or are just starting, you have a chance to finish well. You may not be able to pull off everything on your list the way you wanted to, but you will feel so much more empowered knowing what you have to work with and going into it with your eyes wide open. Even more, you get to enter the new year with no holiday debt. You’re making progress (smile).

Remember to pass this post and these tips on to your family and friends, if you’ve found it helpful to you.