As simple as this sounds, checking in on my progress has made the biggest compounding change in my world!
For this entry, I am going to talk about personal finance management; though I have found that the principle idea is applicable in so many aspects of life.
So this story starts off when I was in my late teens and tried to set a budget, only to find that after a couple of weeks had passed the budget didn’t work out due to all the little contingencies that presented themselves.
So it was all, “hands in the air” and, “I give up”; oh what a big failure it was – it didn’t work for me! Because I expected that when I set the budget it would work perfectly – Afterall I had spent hours creating it, so why wouldn’t it?
But after accepting the fact that when I set a budget, I lack the information and feedback that can only be learned after executing it. I found that setting time to review the notes after a set period of time executing it and tweaking the plan by adding expenses or updating their values. I like to treat it as a living and breathing plan that changes with me.
It took me a good 12 months to perfect my budget – well as close as you can get, as some bills are annual and when a bill comes in a little higher than what I have planned, I would then pay the difference and update the budget to save a little more for the next one. So when I say ‘perfect’, I mean I am consistently tweaking the plan. I try to price up my expenses according to an anticipated CPI increase
Now I can ramble on about all the fine details of my adjustments for my budget thus far but it’s completely individual and what works for me might not work for you
The take-away
Nothing is ever really set-and-forget, you need to set reminders and triggers to review and update accordingly. eg. A calendar appointment or review it when a new bill comes in.
Other than a budget here are some other areas this can be applied to:
- Health and Fitness Journey
- Morning and Evening Routines
- How you spend your days
- How you are progressing in your goals
So is it time to review some of the plans that you have created?
Perhaps it was a template or activity from this website?