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How To Budget Your Way To Financial Freedom
The 4-Step YNAB Method
Managing personal finance is something I know a lot of people dread to think about. Whether they are employed, self-employed or unemployed makes no difference. Budgeting is budgeting, and it scares the heck out of them.
So much so that some people I know (I’m looking at you, mum) try their very best to not look at their bank account or finances at all, and hope for the best when they do spend money.
In my experience, I’ve always lived paycheck to paycheck, and while I had a rough idea of how much money I had available to me, I was never able to stick to a budget of any kind. So as a student, I found myself nearly £2000 in overdraft with my bank because they offered it to me as an interest-free credit facility which was labelled as ‘available funds’.
Unfortunately, this is a very common story among the student population. It’s a life lesson that we, students that give into temptation, have to learn from as we leave university.
I consider myself lucky, my overdraft was interest-free generously for a full year after graduation. Even now there is only interest on a credit balance between £1–2K, a threshold I’ve managed to cross recently with the help of a mindset shift in budgeting.
