Book excerpt: Money Management Skills: A Beginners Guide On Personal Finance And Living Debt Free It is challenging to ask the people around you to follow a budget. The more you force people to limit their personal rewards, the more they want to spend. If you want your entire household to follow a budget, you need to ‘package’ it in a different way. Most professional financial planners, for instance, prefer to call it ‘proper allocation of funds’ to make their clients accept the idea of budgeting. The true value of budgeting When we follow a budgeting plan, we are not depriving ourselves. Rather, we are forgoing immediate gratification in exchange for greater rewards in the future. If you want to be successful in in the long run, you need to practice letting go of instant gratification. We practice this principle consistently in all areas of life. Most people already have the budgeting skills they need. Most of us know how to avoid unnecessary expenses. If you commute to work for example, you may have selected a route that gets you to work with the least expenses. If we do not follow a budget, we would just take the most convenient means of transportation without thinking of the cost. Because we care about being efficient with our money however, we usually avoid expensive forms of transportation. You are already practicing budgeting in most areas of your life. For most people, their budgeting progress is ruined by just a few financial activities. One of the most common areas where people lack discipline is in eating out. This is a big challenge for most millennial. Other people fail to budget well because of expensive tastes in clothing. A person may be disciplined in the way he spends his money on food, utilities and groceries but when it comes to spending on things that make him happy, he loses control. If you want to reach your financial goals, you need to find out which financial activities hurt your budget. By knowing about your spending weaknesses, you will be able to find strategies that will allow you to improve your budgeting performance in the future. Money Management Strategies: Learn Simple Personal Finance Skills To Manage Your Compulsive Spending Addictions, Savings And Live A Debt Free Lifestyle Become a money management superstar and learn how to manage money wisely, design a budget, handle expenses, settle debts successfully, manage debts and make smart investments. As most of us know, one of the most difficult things is to control money. Money is one of the most important things that can be used to serve our goals, but it also is one of the things we tend to overspend, misuse and lose money on. In our short-sightedness, we often mistake significant pursuit for the important things that we should be focusing on. Such as the pursuit of money instead of the things that really drive us. Money is not a short-term goal, and it is not interchangeable with success. If what you want is a lot of money, you might have success and happiness for a while. But there is no guarantee that you will be either successful or happy forever. I know, I know, it is difficult not to admire the big paychecks, large investments, the luxury, the parties or the lifestyle that money provides. People, who are driven by consuming money, tend to be unhappy. When the money is not enough, they need more. When they have enough money, they need more again. You know what I'm talking about. People who are driven to use their money for success and financial freedom are an exception. That is because when you make your own success, you are ultimately in a position of strength and freedom that cannot be taken away from you. So ask yourself how you want to use your money? If you want your money to serve you, then find a way to make enough money to meet your needs and fund your dreams. You will never have enough money if you want to use it to fulfill all of your desires. But if your goal is to have money to use to do what you want in life and get the things you want, you probably will never get to your financial goals. If your goal is to have the money to fund your freedom to do what you want in life, then you will soon be able to do what you want without worrying about money. How do you make enough money to have the freedom you want in your life and to have the money to do what you want in life? First, you need an end goal in life. Your goal does not have to be the best or the richest or the biggest. It just has to have enough certainty that you can focus on it and be able to tell the future how much money it takes to reach your goal. You want to work towards your goals and have the money to build the value you want. Is it worth it to pay what it takes to get what you want? If you have a goal, you do not have to answer that question. Developing a goal and working towards it, you will see your goals increase in value and your motivation will increase as you move towards your goal. What are you waiting for? Design your life and make your dreams a reality.