I am once again tweaking my zero based budget as my financial situation requires. I have a few more changes happening in my life and I expect a few more to come up rapidly in the next few months. This means that I will need to make some big changes in the way I live and in the way that I manage my money.
I made a few small budget tweaks in December last year and now I have to make a few more. The main tweak is that I have had to reduce the total budget and especially focus on the discretionary areas. In my old budget I treated savings like an expense so that I could do things like fund my emergency fund and save up for my dream car.
I have now decided to reduce the amount I put in savings because I will need to rely more on the cash that I actually do have. I will not be saving anything for a little while so I have reduced that budgeted amount to zero and stopped all the transfers to my ING sub accounts for now.
Over the next few months I will be looking at reducing the total budget even more by either reducing categories or eliminating them completely until I get a bare minimum that I can survive on for the next few months.
Have you considered increasing your earnings? Eliminating certain spending categories altogether sounds too drastic, but if you can find ways to earn some side income you may try to cut back on expenses in those categories and still be able to set aside some money for your dream car.