Setting up a budget and sticking with it is hard work. But implementing a budget is a fundamental requirement for achieving your financial freedom. How do you maintain the discipline needed to stay on your budget? How do you keep your long term financial goals in mind when they're so far off in the future?

The answer to that is in your budget itself. The key is to build a pressure relief valve into your budget - sort of like a pressure cooker.

A pressure cooker is a cooking pot with an air-tight lid. The tight closure allows for very high cooking temperatures. The problem with cooking at very high temperatures in an air-tight container is the possibility that the internal pressure will climb too high, causing the pot, dinner and all, to explode in your kitchen. That's why pressure cookers have pressure relief valves to allow them to "blow off some steam".

Blowing off some steam is also a good way to manage the pressures of staying on your budget. You should have a pressure relief valve built into your budget. Your budget should be set up so that it rewards you every month - a reward for staying on budget.

You should have a line item in your budget right alongside all the others, and every bit as important as savings, the utilities bills and the house payment. Give that budget line item whatever name you like, but it's there to catch and collect money that you get to use for whatever you please. Call it "Discretionary" call it whatever you want. No, really, call it literally "Whatever You Want". This is your money to do whatever you want to do. Be as irresponsible with it as you like.

Your "Whatever You Want" budget item is your own personal pressure relief valve. It's your interim reward for setting and maintaining your budget. Just as a pressure cooker helps serve up dinner on time, budgeting helps ensure a secure financial future for you and your family. But just like a pressure cooker, your budget needs to blow off some steam do do its job well.

What you need

http://www.myinvestmentblog.com/budgeting