Reverse Budgeting: Creating A Budget That Actually Peter

Lazaroff

Creating a budget and sticking to it is difficult for most people because the process is time consuming
and restrictive. Traditional budgeting forces you to make every decision as if you live in a
spreadsheet. But guess what? You don’t live in a spreadsheet.
Rather than focusing on expenses, it is better to focus on savings through a process I like to call
“reverse budgeting.” Reverse budgeting simply figures out how much you need to save, makes those
savings automatic and then you spend the remaining amount of money as you please.
If you have spent your budgeted amount on restaurants, but something very important comes up
unexpectedly that requires you to dine out, then you can shift spending elsewhere to fall in line with
your priorities and values.
Because reverse budgeting focuses on saving, you can’t spend what you don’t have. Increasing the
amount you save naturally reduces the amount you spend, but it also forces you to prioritize your
expenditures. This is important because most people find that gradually saving more allows them to
cut spending that doesn’t really fit with their values.
Best of all, reverse budgeting requires very little maintenance. A traditional budget requires weekly
or monthly reconciliation of financial transactions. Once a reverse budget is set up, the entire thing
can be automated. The lack of ongoing time commitment makes it much more likely you will stick to
reverse budget.
Here is how to set up a reverse budget in three easy steps:
1. Add up the amount per month that you need to save to reach your goals short-term
goals. Writing down a goal with an estimated date and expected cost dramatically increases your
likelihood for success. It also allows for you to understand the things that are most important to you.
Start by writing short-term goals (five years or fewer), the date of desired completion and the
expected cost. If you add up the expected cost of all your goals, then you can determine how much
you need to save on a monthly basis to make this happen. Once this is completed, then number the
goals according to your priorities – now you know where to begin directing your monthly savings.
Below is a quick sample of some short-term goals that are totaled and divided by 60 months (five
years) to derive the required monthly savings to reverse budget, assuming you start in January 2017.

Short-term
goals (five Completion Expected
Priority
years or Date Cost
fewer)

Max out Roth

$5,500 every
1 IRA each $27,500
year
year

Build
2 emergency June 2017 $5,000
fund

Pay off September

3 $15,000
student loans 2019

Save for
down December
4 $25,000
payment on a 2021
home
 Total
expected cost
$72,500
over five
years

Required
monthly $1,208
savings

I’d encourage you to also do the same exercise for intermediate-term goals (five to 15 years) as well
as long-term goals (15 years or more). It may be difficult to assign an expected cost to your long-
term goals, but that’s OK, the benefit of this exercise is thinking about it.
If you can’t meet the monthly savings required to meet your short-term goals, then you can try to
escalate your savings over time (see step three), but it also probably means that you need to evaluate
what is most important to you and adjust your goals accordingly.
2. Set up a monthly automatic withdrawal from your checking account to a separate savings
account. Open a savings account, preferably an online savings account that pays a little higher
interest rate than traditional brick and mortar bank. In addition, online savings accounts serve as a
barrier to impulsive spending since the money takes more time to access.
Next, set up an automatic monthly withdrawal from your checking account to the online savings
account to meet the amount you reverse budgeted in step one. Then you are done – simply spend the
leftover money in your checking account as you see fit.
3. Escalate your automatic savings over time. This step is really powerful for both people wanting
to supercharge their savings as well as those that can’t save the required monthly amount to meet
their short-term goals.
Let’s return to our short-term goals example from step one. That example would require a savings
rate of just under 10% for someone with a $150,000 income. Imagine this hypothetical person hasn’t
been saving much prior to this exercise. In that case, suddenly removing $1,208 per month from
his/her lifestyle can be challenging.
Escalating your savings is a way to slowly advance towards your ideal monthly savings. Start by
setting up several automatic withdrawals from your checking and deposit into your online savings
account. The first three months should withdraw $100 per month. The second set should withdraw
$150 in the next three months, then $200 in the next, and so on.
If you are already meeting your short-term monthly savings target, then escalating savings over time
is a great way to begin addressing those intermediate- and long-term goals.
…
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