Benchmarking

RG2015

There have been two recent threads on benchmarking; How much spare money do you have each month? and How much do you earn?

I have often felt that the Budgeting and Bank Accounts board is dominated by banking posts and light on budgeting. I see a distinct gap in the personal finance planning sector on benchmarking and best practice.

Other than threads on this site like the two mentioned above where do people go to find out how to achieve their full financial management potential?

My first thought is an IFA but do they really know about best practice in all areas of budgeting and financial management?

PeacefulWaters

The Debt-free Wannabe section can be excellent for "strict" budgeting.

But you can't teach people the difference between need and want unless they want to be taught.

eskbanker

RG2015 wrote: »

I have often felt that the Budgeting and Bank Accounts board is dominated by banking posts and light on budgeting.

I never have been able to figure out why this board is budgeting and bank accounts when these are, to my mind, entirely different subjects!

I agree with PeacefulWaters that some budgeting matters are covered in DFW since many only start to think about budgeting as a means of getting out of debt, which is obviously a bit late. The standard SOA template used on that board could be used for proactive budgeting, as I pointed out to someone recently on this board.

As well as budgeting as a process, the term also has connotations of cutting one's cloth and clearly there are numerous boards across the forum to do with spending less, paying less tax, earning more, etc, so I guess there is an argument that budgeting is touched on within many boards.

Perhaps a new board would make sense to focus on the process itself though, in the sense of the financial management angle you refer to, rather than lumping this in with bank account posts....