The terms Saving and Spending apply to everyone's lives, no matter how little or big they earn. If you’re ready to be intentional about your finances, you will learn a thing or two from reading the rest of this piece.

If you’re able to save drops of water (small amounts of money), you would be able to save bowls and buckets of water (larger amounts of money), as you receive inflow. Our previous article has established that a habit of daily budgeting has multiple advantages and may be just what you need. Whether you’re an NYSC Corp. Member with a 33,000 naira monthly allowance who wants to buy a new sewing machine, or an entry-level salary earner who wants to buy new inventory for personal business, daily discipline in saving and spending will help you achieve your goal.

It is pertinent to develop financial discipline with effective budgeting platforms. We will appraise how everyday money budgeting can spur better habits as against other methods.

Are The Conventional Savings Rules Effective?

Anyone can draw up ways or use internet-derived methods to help themselves save some portion of their income. But those self-help methods may not convert to saving substantial amounts that can meet your goals at the end of a period.

An instance is using the 80/20 percentage rule for budgeting, where an individual is expected to save the smaller portion of monthly income (20%), and spend the higher portion (80%). If the individual saves ₦20,000 from a hypothetical ₦100,000 salary every month. That amounts to ₦240,000 saved at the end of a year. Supposing that individual has rent of ₦250,000 and a vacation trip fee of ₦50,000 to pay at the end of that year, they will fall short of ₦50,000 to meet up with those payments.

The 80/20 percent budgeting system is not a bad idea altogether, but it has no room for directives on how to spend on each need or want. It also shuts out the possibility of saving so much more and spending less per year. Similar budgeting methods, vaguely include measures that bind an individual to follow through with their spending limit per day or contribution to savings.

The whole point of having strict habits for saving and spending is to end up with money that meets specific choices or goals. Such discipline may even allow for miscellaneous funds. Methods of budgeting without structure or strict arrays for accountability may be inefficient to help an individual produce targeted savings amounts at the end of a period.

Budgeting Your Everyday Money Breeds Discipline

Following structure in everything we do, brings consistent results. To have discipline with finances, it is important to practice good spending and saving habits daily. If you can view Budgeting every day as a means to meet one or more financial goal(s), the habit of saving and spending fixed amounts regularly becomes easier to employ.

Keeping money in your regular bank account doesn’t guarantee you’re saving money for a purpose. It is important to be intentional about what you want to do with every amount you withdraw. It would serve as a driving force to save more. This is why budgeting the money we spend every day is one way to go. The following steps will form a guideline for cultivating discipline in saving and spending:

Review your income and daily savings target

Record your cash inflow and how much you can comfortably set aside each day. If you want to have ₦10,000 saved in a month, and you earn ₦50,000 monthly, saving at least ₦300 daily should be your target. Reviewing your income will enable you to be upfront with yourself about what you can or can’t afford.

Set an amount to spend daily

This may sound impractical, but it is not. When you ask yourself how much you spend on average each day, you realize you don’t spend at all or so much on some days, and you spend more on others. Also, consider what it is you spend on and then choose an amount you would not go beyond per day. These should help you come up with a round figure of how much you can comfortably spend daily, without needing to go beyond that amount.

Decide on specific goals

Having set goals makes room for a clearer vision of how to achieve them. Goals could be your need to “buy a piece of land”, "eat a meal from your favorite restaurant ", “get a new car”, “pay your rent “, “get a health checkup" etc. Choose which goals you want to meet by saving daily and spending less. Remember that we are more inclined to spend on things we want, and not things we need.  So make sure the goals you choose to save for are your foremost “need”. Knowing your goal will give you the whole amount you need to have saved by the end of a period.

Decide on the time to meet your goals

Goals should be bound by time, so they keep you conscious of putting more savings in. The time frame should be realistic, and not infinite. Decide a time frame for when you would want to have completed your target amount to achieve your goal.

Additionally, you should be prudent when you want to spend and don’t see any amount as too small to save. Note that paying attention to how much you spend, has a ripple effect on how much you would be able to save. But, do not count any goal as inconsequential or unnecessary. As long as you have saved towards it, you deserve to spend on it. Cut your excesses, never buy or spend on impulse and have a third-party platform you can trust to help you stay faithful in imbibing better saving and spending and saving habits.

Using the everyday money initiative would keep larger sums of your money intact, despite the inevitable temptation to dip into saved funds. The funds accessible in the little amounts would be the amount you choose to spend per day. And the inaccessible funds stay secured in your balance to be distributed to the goals specified. If you practice a habit daily, you become a master of it in no time.

This system of working with an everyday money plan almost guarantees a high success rate of meeting goals. The transparency of your daily spending and savings will instill accountability in oneself and exhort discipline with finances. Consider a daily budget today.