Why Does Every Budget I Start Fall Apart by Week Two?

You started a budget more times than you can count, and every single time it's in pieces by the second week, sometimes by the second day. You're not lazy and you're not bad at this. Your budget itself is built wrong. And there's a better way to build, one that survives real life.The reason that budgets fail is almost never willpower. And the fix is simpler than starting over for the hundredth time. So stay with me today and. And let's build a budget that lasts past Friday.Hello and welcome to Financially Confident Christian. I'm Ralph Estep Jr. And I just want to thank you for joining me today.Today's one of those episodes that builds so much frustration in people and that's why your budgets keep collapsing and how to build when it actually sticks. We got a listener question. And this person starts that budget full of hope, like so many of us.And like so many of us, it falls apart within two weeks every single time. And they're starting to think they're just incapable. But there's a special kind of discouragement in failing at the same thing over and over.But I want to assure you something. For most people, the failure is the method. It's not you.Now, if you've got a question like budgeting or finance of some sort, I would love to answer your question. You can send me your question by going to financiallyconfidentchristian.com/questionWe'll put a link in the show notes, but again, that's financiallyconfidentchristian.com/question Let's get to today's listener question. Now, today I'm going to start with the subject line again because this is a doozy.The subject said, I've started a budget a dozen times and it never lasts. What's wrong with me? Now, before I read the question, there's nothing wrong with you. The system's broken. But here's the question. Hi, Ralph.I feel a little ridiculous even asking this. First of all, on this show, there are no ridiculous questions. But let me continue. I've started a budget so many times, I've lost count.New Year, New month. Hey, even a new app. I get excited, I write it all out, and I'm motivated for about a week and a half. But then something happens.That birthday I forgot about. The car needs an oil change. My kid needs cleats. It's getting to be that season again, isn't it?And suddenly the budget doesn't match reality anymore, and I just give up. And I tell myself I'll start fresh next month. And the whole thing repeats itself. Ralph, I've watched videos. I know the percentages.It's not that I don't understand budgeting. It's that I can't seem to keep one alive past two weeks. What am I doing wrong?Is there a way to make one that doesn't fall apart the second life happens? Thank you. Yes. The answer to your question is yes, and I've got the answer today. But I want to start with a basic thing here.Budgets don't fail because you're undisciplined. You've already said it. You know what to do. You know the percentages.The problem with most people's budgets, they fail because they're built for a perfect month, and perfect months never come. And a budget that can't survive surprises was never going to survive at all. It was dead on arrival.You got to build one with the dents already hammered in. You go to the car lot, you buy a car, you don't want it with a lot of dents hammered in. But with a budget, that's what you want.So let's get to how to do that. Number one thing, you got to stop budgeting for a perfect month. Most people who budget, they assume nothing unexpected is going to happen.Well, you know about life. Something unexpected always happens. Like you mentioned in your Klistner call the birthday. The oil change. Yes. The cleats for football or soccer.Those aren't emergencies, though. They're life. And if you've got a budget that breaks the moment real life shows up, that isn't a real budget.The goal isn't some flawless plan like some shining city on a hill. It's a flexible one. And when you expect the bumps, when you expect the short things, you expect the unexpected.Those things stop wrecking you if you've got a budget that can't survive a surprise that was never built for real life. So we got to start thinking about building something for real life in reality. So how do you make this work?You got to build in something that I call sinking funds. That's the stuff that you keep on forgetting. In your listener question, you mentioned a couple things.You said birthdays and oil changes and stuff for kids. Those are the things that blow up your budget. And they're not random. I'm sorry? They're predictable. You just forget about them.So one of the key things you can do right now is make a list of those irregular expenses. They're not emergencies. Those are those surprise things. Things like birthdays, Christmas, your car maintenance. Yes.Those kids Activities and those annual subscriptions that just kind of sneak up on you. Add up the yearly cost of Those, divide by 12, and set that aside every month in a sinking fund.And then when that cost does hit, because it's going to happen, the money is already there. There's no scramble, there's no collapse. There's no, I can't budget anymore.This one move, trust me on this, this one move is going to fix the most common reasons that most budgets die. Those expenses aren't a surprise. You just haven't saved for them yet. But I'm going to ask you to do one more thing.I'm going to tell you that you need to give yourself what I'll call the miscellaneous cushion. Now, this isn't that cushion on the couch that you just throw around when somebody needs a place to crash.Because no matter how careful you are, when you put your budget together, something's going to slip through. So you got a plan for it? Build a buffer line into every budget. I like to call it something like My life happens budget line.Even if it's a couple hundred dollars a month that's going to absorb that small stuff that used to break everything. If you've got a budget with no margin, that's just a budget waiting to snap. This is the shock absorber that keeps the whole thing on the road.You got to leave room for the unexpected, because the unexpected always shows up. Now, here's another killer of most budgets. You got to check in weekly. Don't give up after day one.As many of you know, I've been on a health conquest for the past several years. There are days that go better than others. It would be real easy for me to say, you know what? I can't diet. I can't lose weight. I can't do this.I'm done. So many people think of their budget the same way. They have a bad day, they have those unexpected expenses. That electric bill was too high.That car had a maintenance you weren't expecting. You can't rate your budget once and never look at it. If you did that, that's not a budget that doesn't want to work.So you got to take 15 minutes once a week and look at what actually happened. When you put together your budget, you made the best assumptions you can make. Maybe you consider those other things we talked about, those surprises.But you can't cast it in stone like some big tablets that you chiseled into it. You got to adjust it on the fly. Maybe you've got to do some Shifting around, maybe. You got to move some money between categories.You got to react to what real life did. A budget to be successful has got to be a living document.It's not some New Year's resolution that you check off and say, well, let me try it again next year. It's okay to make those small weekly corrections because that prevents that big week two blow up that you're talking about.If you've got a budget that was written once and never opened, that's just a wish with numbers. But something else in your question I want to lean into. You gotta aim for progress, not a perfect score.The real reason that you've quit isn't the broken budget. It's that shame of failing. You've said it. I've done this so many times. Ralph, you've got one blown category.That doesn't mean the whole month has failed. It's just one line that you need to adjust. Don't throw away the whole plan because one part didn't go perfectly.The truth is, a budget that's 80% followed beats a perfect one that you don't do anymore. So stay in the game. The people who win at budgeting are the ones who don't quit at the first dent. You don't need a perfect budget.You need one you don't abandon. Now, you said something in your listener question. You said you feel ridiculous, like there's something wrong with you.I want to take that off your shoulders. Trying again after failing isn't a sign of weakness, friend. That's a sign of faithfulness. The person who's truly given up doesn't start a new budget.You keep starting. But here's what faith doesn't promise us. It doesn't promise us a month with no surprises.It doesn't promise us you're never going to blow a category again. Trust me, you are going to do those things. And it doesn't promise us it gets easier overnight.But here's what faith does promise, and this is a beautiful thing. We serve a God of new beginnings, and he's not keeping this immortal tally of your failed attempts.It talks about in scripture that his mercies are new every morning, and so is every budget. Scripture tells us that his compassions never fail. They're new every morning. That's not just spiritual comfort.It's permission to begin again and again and again without shame. You don't have to carry that weight of every past attempt into this one. Each new month is a clean page, and our God is the author of fresh starts.So if you failed at this. If you've been discouraged by this, start again today. Not with shame, but with a smarter plan.And think about building one that bends instead of breaks. You're not a budget failure. You've been using a budget that was set up to fail from the beginning, and that can change today.The fact that you're trying is exactly why you'll get there. So here is your win for today, and this is going to be a very important win.I want you to go and list those irregular expenses that always seem to blindside you. How do you do it? Go think over to last year. One of the things I encourage you to do is go look at your credit card statements.Go look at your bank statements and highlight those things that surprised you. Write down each one of those and write down roughly what it cost. And then pick those top three and create those sinking funds.I'm not telling you to go build a whole new budget today. Just name the landmines. You're going to diffuse those if you see those. Because the truth is, you can't plan for what you refuse to write down.Which leads me to our Bible verse for today. It comes from the Book of Lamentations, chapter 3, verses 22 and 23. It says, the faithful love of the Lord never ends. His mercies never cease.Great is his faithfulness. His mercies begin afresh each morning.I love that verse, and it's so reassuring to me because the whole problem you described today was feeling crushed by repeated failure. But what does this verse tell us? It tells us that God's mercy resets every single morning.There's no running tally of your stumbles and your failures. If God offers you that fresh start daily, you owe yourself one too. Beginning again is not defeat. It's the rhythm that grace was built on.Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, I bring before you today someone who keeps trying and keeps feeling like they've failed.They've tried starting over and tempted to believe they just can't do it anymore. Lord, I just encourage you to meet them with encouragement right right at this moment.Give them a plan that finally fits their real life, those surprises and all those dents that we talked about. Replace that shame of those past attempts with hope for this one, Lord.And grant them the discipline for a weekly check in and the grace to adjust without quitting. Remind them as your scripture tells us, that your mercies are new every single morning and so is every fresh start. So.So let them feel your patience as they learn to do it better today. And a little bit better tomorrow and we ask all these things in Jesus name. Amen, friend. You came in feeling like a repeat failure.But right now, if you listen to what I talked about today, you got the energy to go and know that the budget was the problem. It wasn't you. You got to build that plan that expects life surprises because that's the plan that survives.So your big takeaways for today, stop budgeting per the perfect. Expect those bumps, build those sinking funds, add that miscellaneous cushion. Check in weekly and aim for progress. Don't aim for perfection.One blown line isn't a failed month. Now maybe you're suffering through something. You're really having a hard time with something financially. I'd love to hear your voice.You know, one of the things you can do is you can actually record a voicemail message for me. You can do that by going to our website and it's financiallyconfidentchristian.com/voicemail. We'll put a link in the show notes. It's super simple.Just click on the link, click record and I'll hear your voice again. That's financiallyconfidentchristian.com/voicemail. Thank you for joining me today. I want to encourage you, as always, stay financially savvy.Remember every day his mercies renew again. God bless you. And you have a truly great day today. Living with purpose and vision. Heart, sun and a division oh, oh we ride.