Budgeting

Element III: Family and Personal Finance

Every craftsperson learns from very early in their apprenticeship the idea of properly managing the materials of their craft. Budgeting is the craftsperson's tool for planning in advance how much income they expect to receive and how to use it to meet family and personal financial goals. Like all of LIFECRAFT, budgeting is a systematic plan for managing the commodity we call money.

If you learn to use this tool with skill as a true craftsperson, it will serve you well and help you to achieve your ultimate goal; "to make your life a masterpiece." Fortunately for today's craftsperson, there are many powerful and easy to use tools to help you manage your family and personal budget. Your budget will help you to organize your finances and understand how you are using your money. With this tool you will be able to quickly understand whether or not you are using your money to achieve your family and personal financial goals.

If you should find that the way you are presently using your money is not helping you to achieve your financial goals the way you would like to, then you can also use your budget to help you realign where you are "sending" your money. Your main goal is to "send" your money to the right places in the right quantities to achieve the results you desire. Every craftsperson whether a farmer or a woodworker knows from experience that just the right amount of focus or pressure in just the right place makes the difference between a good harvest or a cabinet door that is chronically out of alignment. Your budget is a measuring tool just like the craftsmans ruler used together with the draftsman's blueprint.

1. Your first budget measurement will show you how you spend your income. You don't align a ten foot stone wall by only measuring the first 5 feet. Measure the whole thing.

2. Your second measurement will compare how out of alignment your current use of your income is with your "blueprint", that is, your family and personal financial plan. From here you can calculate what amount of corrective work you will have to do and how long it should take to bring your use of income into alignment with your financial blueprint.

3. Your third measurement will be tracking the progress you will be making each week and each month as you are making little adjustments which continually bring your use of your income into "plumb" with your financial blueprint.

4. Once you have completed the corrective adjustments and you are in line with your financial blueprint, your budget continues to act as monitoring tool to warn you if your use of income is out of "plumb" with your plan. Even stone walls of the greatest craftsmanship are subject to the powerful changing forces of nature.

Return to Element III Index: Family & Personal Finance

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