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Ive had a lot of people tell me that setting up theirbudget was simple but when it came to living by itpayday after payday they admitted losing interest ina very short time.Lets face it. The day to day drudgery of trying tofigure out how to best spend your money isnt the mostinteresting aspect of our lives.Let me see if I can make the budget process a littlemore appealing to you. I dont have any magic or secretprocess to tell you about but I do have a method thatwill show you why a budget doesnt have to be boring.I can do this with one word. GOALSWhen we think of goals most of us look far into the futureto our retirement. Thats the problem. Its hard toimagine when your 20 what you will need when you are 65.Accomplishing your goals doesnt have to take a lifetime.Even when they do you can set milestones along the way tobreak it up and get a sense of accomplishment much earlier.If you have problems staying on a budget try setting someshort term goals. We can start with an easy one. Try tosave $100 without missing it.Unless you have no income at all this is easy. Dont spend any coins for any reason. If you buy something for 25 centsbreak a dollar. Then all you have to do is put the change out of your pocket or purse in a jar every day.This sounds simple enough and youve probably heard aboutsaving change before. If you are a skeptic like I was youprobably think that this isnt going to lead to any realsavings at all.Lets get back to that $100 I was talking about. How longdo you think it would take you to save enough change toequal $100. 6 months? 1 year?The fact is that the average person can save $100 in lessthan three months. In some cases even sooner. Thats notvery long to accomplish a goal.Now lets look at setting milestones using the same method.Roll your change once a month to see how close you are toyour goal. Write down how much you saved that month on apiece of paper and put that and your rolled change back inthe jar. Keep doing this until youve reached your $100goal.Now, what do you do with that $100? You could put it in asavings account and earn a little interest but it still wouldnt be worth much more than $100 even after a year.My suggestion would be to pay it on one of your credit cards.That way you could turn that $100 into much more withthe interest you would save.It may sound like I strayed from the topic of this article bytalking about saving your change. Actually a budget is justa system of reaching goals. You do this by working backwards.You decide what it is you want to do and then make all of yourmoney decisions based on that end.Setting up and maintaining a budget is going to take organization and discipline. This task will be much easierif you are working toward something you really want.To learn more about Budgets you can visit The CompleteBudget and Bill Organizerhttp://www.homemoneyhelp.com/BBOonline.htmlto find Budget Stretchers free budget system completewith all of the forms and worksheets.

About the Author

Terry Rigg is the author of Living Within Your Means - The Easy Way http://www.homemoneyhelp.com/ebookadpage.html and editor of The FREE Budget Stretcher Newsletter and Budget Stretcher web site http://www.homemoneyhelp.com. He has 25 years of experience counseling individuals and families concerning their personal finances. Use this email link to get a list of all of Terrys articles by autoresponder at:mailto:articlelist@budgetstretcherpremium.com