Each week, make one improvement in your chosen category, fixing it completely over a period.
Set yourself a broad goal of reducing your overall spending by a certain percentage in a Three-Month Check-In. In the next quarter, shave off another 10% or 20% from your expenses, making sure your base goal is realistic but can stretch if needed. Keep repeating this activity for the next few months and build momentum.

Week By Week Progress

Typical regular budgeting methods assume that just by allotting limited money to a particular expense type (like groceries) is enough for us to spend less and balance our budget instantly.
This suddenly asks us to curb our lifestyle by focusing on everything at once, instead of a step-by-step approach. We normally fail at this 'ideal' method and need a realistic way to deal with our budget.

Typical Budgeting is Flawed

When you look at our past spending patterns and trends, you can select one or two categories to focus and use one of these two approaches:
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<li>Tackle the high-dollar impact areas like housing, fuel, food, or healthcare, and see if those can be cut down to some extent.</li>
<li>Focus first on your 'disposable money' expenses like eating out, and entertainment and curbing those, gradually.</li>
</ol>

The Two Approaches using Trends

A Reverse Budget looks at your current lifestyle and makes slow improvements over time until things are sufficiently better.
We look at how much we are spending eating out, commuting and daily indulgences and see the past quarter trends using your credit card and bank account spending.

The Reverse Budget

Budgeting as it is normally implemented sets you up to fail. Here's what to do instead. If there is one word in the personal finance lexicon that makes people cringe, it has to be the word budget. Every well-meaning article suggests you build and stick to an ambitious budget.