How to cut down excessive spending as an Entrepreneur in Nigeria.

This topic takes my mind back to a scene in Smart Money Women, where Zuri couldn’t account for her uncoordinated finances and this landed her in deep gbese! (Debts) Then we progressed to where she began budgeting, monthly expenditure, and income tracking, identifying the loopholes, and cutting back on unwanted spending. She became happier, freer, and investment-ready.

When it comes to money, a lot of times it’s a touchy subject for many because people place value on the weight of their individual bank accounts, but as a business owner or a freelancer it is very necessary to budget. Before we go on this journey, take a moment to reflect on moments in your financial journey that you wished you had budgeted or put a spending limit on your finances, what would you have done differently?

While taking into account the policies in Nigeria that do not make owning or growing a business favorable, you cannot afford to splurge unnecessarily without putting in place the required structure to control your finances. Even the government ensures to put in place a yearly budget for the economy, so you get how important this is.

Let’s have a quick glance at what Budgeting means for your business. This is a process when you track your incomes, the money that comes in from selling products or services, and also your expenditures, money that goes out when you sort bills over a specific period of time. This helps you create a spending plan for your business and ensure you can account for what comes in or goes out as well as regulate cash flow in your business. Also, this would help you avoid credit card debts and promote savings.

The key teachings of budgeting are self-discipline, frugality, prudence, and how to control your money. It also helps you utilize available resources and the outcome is an informed financial decision that benefits your long-term goals.

Advantages of Budgeting

Budgeting has major advantages and these guide you on how to avoid excessive expenses on a daily basis, once you adopt them they are hard to let go of because who doesn’t love clean and robust finances? We know you do! Hey budgeter, let’s help you track all your income and expenses on the go! We are here to make the journey less tedious and more delightful, trust Dillali your growth partner to help you get started!

One key advantage is staying out of debt, once you have a budgeting plan this helps you put in place the necessary resources to cover what you need most importantly you spend on salient needs and that keeps you on a balance and out of debts. It’s a scale that keeps you in check so you don’t end up spending more than you make thus attracting debts and zero savings.

An add-on before we proceed would be to set realistic budgets for your business or personal finances. Accurate forecasting is good to help you know ahead of time the high and low points in your finances, thus helping you adjust as the seasons may come.

Manage your money more efficiently and proper allocation:

Once budgeting is incorporated into your financial strategy you definitely make headway in terms of being more efficient and effective in managing. You do not spend on things that are not needed and you prioritise high-priority needs

Monitor Performance:

Dillali is your go-to for this, imagine being sent your financial report on a monthly basis with clear details about what came in and what went out. How amazing is that?

Foresee financial downtime before they occur:

You never know what can come up in the course of doing business, so just as in personal life, it's important to plan for the unexpected in business. A budget can help you set aside money in the event of an emergency so you don't have to grab funds from some other part of business operations instead.

Improve your profits and return on investment:

A smart business plan is to ensure you gets your profit right and have a decent return on your investment, budgeting helps you achieve this. Blocks out debts and projects accountability.

Tips for creating the right budget for your finances.

Account for all income, to form a well-constructed budget you must be able to account for all your incomes, categorizing your incomes ensures that your budgeting process is smooth, and should in the event of leftover income, you can put that in an emergency fund.

Reevaluate your budget periodically, the good thing about your budget is that it is yours and open to re-evaluation, with this you can monitor and see how your performance was and then revise as needed so you remain as accurate as possible.

Overestimate expenses, this is a very interesting yet important tip, when you overestimate sometimes it helps when unanticipated expenses come up, because you have surplus cash you are not in a bind. Overestimating may also give you money back into the budget that you can place in your emergency fund or use it to pay yourself back for another month where expenses may have been higher than expected.

Consider long-term needs, you must pay for the future so why not account for it now so you don’t end up going into debt to accommodate the expense as they arise or miss an opportunity altogether.

Break down your budget, breaking down your budget into sub-categories makes it easy for you to oversee the expense per category. By breaking down your budget, you will be in a better position to plan for the slower months and get your income to stretch further.

In summary, even while creating the right budget you need to invest in some innovative softwares that help ease your process, Dillali is one of such, keeping your business free for human error and easy record keeping on your overall finances (both income and expenses) and get a detailed report on how your numbers are doing. Sounds super exciting right? The best part about it is that it is free! Become a super user today visit www.dillali.com.

‍