Do you take financial responsibility for your business or do you keep getting tempted by bright shiny objects?
One of the things you need to do when running a small business is to keep a close track on your spending and take financial responsibility for every penny spent.
Too often we get sucked into impulse buys and then have a ton of things we don’t really need or use. How many highlighters, shiny notepads, diaries, planners and magazines does one girl need? This all then adds to the clutter on desks and bookcases that in turn takes time to sort through and get rid of. And of top of this, how many courses have you signed up to that you have never completed? I have four outstanding at the time of writing. Shameful I know!
If this resonates with you, go out and purchase yourself a small notebook (or use one of the many shiny, colourful ones you have stashed away. At the top of each page, list how much money you have in your monthly budget to spend on non-essential items for the month and then every time you make a purchase, deduct it from the amount available to try and help you keep on track.
If you aren’t still a feather quill and ledger type of person, there are numerous mobile apps out there that can help you keep a track of your daily spend and the majority of them are for free. You can also use just a simple spreadsheet on your phone. A couple of apps that I use are MyMoney and I have also just downloaded ShopSavvy Barcode Scanner which lets you scan a barcode of a product and then lists where you can buy it at the best price.
Since I have put this into practice, I have already stopped and thought twice about making a couple of purchases and not gone ahead with them. By setting myself a limit, I know that by making those ‘small’ purchases now it will reduce my overall spend and I may see something else that I prefer later in the month.
This is all such simple and basic stuff but what so many of us forget to do by letting our financial responsibility slip. We then find we have overspent and end up feeling stressed when we check the bank balance at the end of the month.
And finally, the best of thing of all that I have done is gone and bought myself (yes, I have entered it in my notebook!) a good old fashioned piggy bank. I love him and have promised to feed him daily with at least one gold coin out of my personal money so that at the end of the year I will have a minimum of £365 to reward myself for taking financial responsibility for my business. Happy times!
