Idiot proof budgeting for writers

Hooray, September’s payment for August’s posts came through from Medium! I made 12.60 USD which when translated to CAD means just over $15. Enough to take my beautiful wife out for a nice drink, or appetizer. Guess I’m not going to be living on this writing income anytime soon hey? But that leads me into the next topic, which is setting up idiot proof budgeting for beginners. See, I do numbers for a living, usually money numbers. As an accountant, I am often questioned when people are forming their budgets, then again when they’re trying to assess their performance based on budgets.

Can I let you in on a pair of secrets? Two points. One, at best a budget is a good guess supported by subsequent events. Two, at worst, it’s a bad guess refuted by subsequent events. Personal budgets are slightly different, but not enough different to make this irrelevant.

So, knowing that this is a guess, pressure is off right? Probably not. If you’re at the point where NEED a budget to see what’s happening, then there’re likely pressures I don’t know about aren’t there? Let me know in the comments if you’d like.

Where to start? What you did or what you want?

First big question, do you want to budget based on what you have coming in and what you have spent in the past (tracking to keep on the right…