Episode 985: Budget versus Tracking

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 985 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Joe Schum: I'm Joe Shum from soul patch, hippo success coaching. I want to serve your journey to be the next version of you to be inspired, to become the most authentic. You listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcasts by my friend, Scott Mader every day can help you keep the focus that.

[00:00:25] Scott Maderer: one way that you budget or the one way that you track, but the truth is you need to align it with a few simple thoughts. You need to think about first. What is it that works best for you? But you also need to think about where do you want things to be easy versus where do you want things to maybe take you a little longer and slow you down.

[00:00:50] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you [00:01:00] must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in you. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:16] In today's episode about investing in others through stewarding your treasures. I talk with you about the difference between budgeting and tracking. I talk about why both are important, but they aren't interchangeable. And I also share why we can do these in different ways, but we do really need to do them as we talk about stewarding your treasures.

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[00:02:05] One of the topics that comes up a lot when you're talking to people about managing their money, is this idea of, do I need to budget my money? Do I need to track my money? Can I do one and not the other? And then of course, how do I actually do those things correctly? And the truth is there's a difference between a budget and tracking your.

[00:02:30] The budget is your plan. It's looking forward into the future. We're tracking is looking backwards. A budget is saying, this is what I want to have happen. And tracking is looking at what actually occurred. The truth is both of these are important. If you've listened to the show for a while, you've heard me talk before about this idea of review, reflect, [00:03:00] revise, and repeat, looking at what you're doing, planning it, then looking at what actually happened, reflecting on what the difference is, and then revising either your behavior or your plan over time.

[00:03:17] This is a way of getting better over time without looking for trying to make the big leaps. This is the key to improvement. Oftentimes we try to often fix everything by making massive change, but sometimes that's necessary. Other times it's making the little gradual incremental improvements that really moves.

[00:03:45] Budgeting and tracking are both important because budgeting is the plan by which you measure what happened when you tracked so that when you reflect and make revisions, you can realistically think about what [00:04:00] happened. Why did it happen? Is it that I wildly underestimated how much it was going to cost to do something.

[00:04:07] My budget was wrong or is it, my actions were wrong. Is there something about how I acted or what I did or what choices I made? Is there a tool or a technique that I can inject into my life that can help me get more in alignment between what my values are, what my priorities are that shows up in my budget and what I'm actually doing and what actually happens that shows up in my tracking.

[00:04:32] They're both important, but they're not entertaining. All too often. I see people that are like I'm budgeting. And then when I walked through and ask them what they're actually doing, what they're really doing is tracking. So they don't have a plan by which to evaluate how well they did. They don't have a goalpost.

[00:04:52] They don't have a measuring stick because it's really just a matter of looking going. Yep. That's what. Now you can still reflect [00:05:00] on that and say, is that what I wanted to have happen? But without doing some thinking ahead of time, about what are your priorities and what are your values and how should those show up in your money?

[00:05:10] It's much harder to make real change and see that you're moving in a direction that you want to go. It's harder to have a big why behind making changes. If you've never sat down and done the plan in the first place. These can be done in different ways. The truth is that's another thing everyone wants to know.

[00:05:32] What's the one, one way that you budget or the one way that you track, but the truth is you need to allow. With a few simple thoughts you need to think about first. What is it that works best for you, but you also need to think about where do you want things to be easy versus where do you want things to maybe take you a little longer and slow you down?

[00:05:58] See, the truth is [00:06:00] when you're budgeting, I often like using something like an Excel sheet or even paper and pencil because by slowing the process down a little bit, you begin. To really think about it. You begin to try to align it with what you want to do. It's a place where I want friction to be involved in the process.

[00:06:21] That's one reasons I don't like a lot of apps in most cases for budgeting, because instead I like to look at what you do to make. More in alignment. And that requires slowing down that requires taking some time to think, but tracking on the other hand, I like to inject efficiency there. I like to inject smoothness there.

[00:06:50] I don't want someone having to sit down and run a 52 page report and do all of this processing so that they can come [00:07:00] up with where they spent their time. This is where using an app that links into your bank and actually pre categorizes. Most of your repeat activities can be really useful because it actually can speed up the process of tracking.

[00:07:16] So again, it's thinking about where is it that you want. To slow down. And where is it that you want to speed up? Where is it that you need to inject the plan so that what the target is and where is it that you need to inject tracking? What really happened, but then even more important.

[00:07:38] When are you going to set a time aside, time to review and reflect on that so that you can make changes in what's going on. So that over time you get more and more. And alignment. Thanks for listening.

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