The budget is a tool that allows you to keep track of your income and expenses, compare and analyze them to manage your finances correctly, with the goal of realizing our life projects.
Why it is important to keep a budget
Knowing how to make a budget is not a skill reserved for accountants or entrepreneurs but a useful ability for anyone who wants to manage their money consciously. Keeping expenses under control, anticipating necessary savings, planning savings, avoiding waste, and preventing situations of excessive debt are goals achievable only through careful management of one’s money. The budget represents a mirror of our habits, an ally to improve our financial balance and make rational decisions.
Four tips for an ideal budget
- Write everything down, immediately: every income and expense must be recorded. Even a coffee at the bar or parking. Accuracy makes the difference.
- Divide expenses by category: housing, groceries, transport, leisure… This helps you understand where to cut or increase, avoiding waste.
- Choose a tool that is convenient for you: an Excel sheet, an app, or a simple notebook. The important thing is to use it regularly!
- Share it with your family: the budget is family, not personal. Involving partners and children helps create shared awareness. Furthermore, it helps younger people develop a balanced approach to money.
The budget as an educational tool
Making a budget is not just a matter of numbers. It is an exercise in awareness, which helps us organize our priorities and get used to thinking in a medium-to-long-term perspective: understanding how much we can spend, what is really necessary to buy, what our goals are, and how to organize ourselves to achieve them.
Keeping a budget is an ancient method: it was the mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli, in the 15th century, who formalized the principle of “double-entry bookkeeping,” still at the base of modern accounting today. In the Admire exhibit of the Museun of Saving, among the paintings presented in the virtual reality-based experience, we encounter Luca Pacioli explaining the functioning of a budget in the famous painting by Iacopo de’ Barbari from 1495. A work of extraordinary symbolic and artistic value, representing one of the first attempts to formalize accounting knowledge.
At the Museum of Saving, we promote a fun and accessible approach to financial education for all ages. Learning how to make a budget is a first step to becoming aware and responsible citizens in one’s economic decisions.
July 23, 2025