Skip the budget and try this instead

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Have you reached the point where your income comfortably exceeds your expenses? 

When you've built up a sufficient cash cushion and are regularly investing towards your family’s current and future goals using a reverse budgeting approach, holding yourself to a budget might feel unnecessary. The question then becomes…

Is budgeting still really necessary?

If you’re lucky enough to find yourself in this situation, an alternative to budgeting is to track your spending instead. Now you’re probably thinking… 

How is tracking my spending any different than budgeting? 

Budgeting typically requires assigning all of your expected income to specific categories ahead of time. Tracking your spending is something that only happens after the spending has already occurred.

I use a program called Tiller as an easy way to track my family’s spending. Tiller allows you to link all of your bank accounts and credit cards into one Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel document. It then automatically pulls in and aggregates all of your transactions from those various places. 

Every few days, I log into Tiller and assign my new spending transactions to categories that I can edit or add myself. By using their default template, I can easily see what exactly I’m spending my money on and make any adjustments based on that information moving forward.

So while you might find yourself fortunate that you no longer need to budget in the traditional sense, you can still build greater awareness around where your money is going. And that awareness can help ensure your spending remains properly aligned with the people and things that matter most to you.