When is the best time to start your new budget?

Millions of people make New Year's resolutions to change their lives. Over 80% of us resolve to change something for the New Year and 77% believe that they can make it past the year and into the new year and beyond and change something about themselves permanently.

Stop smoking. Exercise. Get healthy. Get money under control. Take a vacation. Buy a house. Start a budget.

Guess what the percentage is of failures?

91%. Ninety one percent of Americans who make resolutions fail to make significant changes to their lives via New Year's resolutions.

Almost 25% fail by the end of the first week of the new year. One week. We can't even make it one week. This is the quitting smoking crowd. Almost 50% fail by the end of the month (January). The rest fail by the end of February. Only 9% manage to achieve some success.

One of the things most people fail at and get frustrated by, is budgeting. This is because we are expected to know how to budget - we are expected to know how money works. But how many of us actually do? How many of us have been sat down by our parents and were told, "here is our budget - this is how you build one - this is how you maintain one". Very few.

But how many of us were told growing up, "don't talk about money, politics or religion".

God forbid we discuss something like budgeting, that will have a profound impact on our lives instead of being told that it is not polite to talk about money management.

This is why there are so many people who make New Year's resolutions concerning money and budgeting and finances. We desperately want to have a better understanding of financial management but when we are kids we have no way to find answers we are looking for, and when we are adults we are embarrassed to admit we don't know how money works.

But if we never stop and say, "I don't know how this works, let me learn it so I can do it", how will things ever get better?!

AverageLas is a budgetary workshop that dives into the characteristics of money management and monetary history. Why? Because I got tired of failing at budgeting and wanted to learn how to avoid the pitfalls. So the 6-week introductory workshop focuses on Budgeting and basic monetary principles. Because I know there are people out there, lots of people, who are also tired of failing at budgeting.

So to answer the question, when is the best time to start budgeting? The BEST answer is 10 years ago. The second best answer is today.