Not all of us are the left-brained-accountant type of person. That does not, however, exclude you from responsible money management. Worksheets constructed just for this purpose can make even a right-brained person appear left-brained to their friends - and isn’t this what we’re all shooting for?

However, I’ve seen some tweakings on the YNAB Personal Budget that are absolutely wild at times - colors, design, layout, etc. It didn’t take me long to realize how a right-brained person had taken some money management worksheets and improved upon them in more ways than one.

If you’re right-brained, you may just have a major advantage when it comes to managing your money. How? You’re creative! Creativity will put some spice into your worksheests, making the task of money management not only more enjoyable, but more effective.

The left-brained person’s worksheets (and I’d say the basic YNAB layout fits this bill) is pretty straight-forward. You have your inflows, your outflows, and a way to manage your spending through the use of some type of budgeting tool. Those are just the basics of an effective worksheet though. Money management can be improved when you invoke the powers of your right brain just a little bit more.

You need to get creative!

It’s obvious the worksheets need those basics as discussed above, but can your right side take them any further? That’s what happened to me when I started out with the YNAB System. I just started with the basics. My right brain told me a few different things that improved the system by leaps and bounds. Your right brain will do the same!

One big change to the worksheets was the use of the previous month’s income. This completely solved the unsolvable problem of “not knowing what to budget because [I] don’t know what we’ll make.” Another right-sided solution was with the overdrafting. At first, simply out of necessity I thought you’d just carry overdrafts through the entire year. Only after really looking at it from my more creative side did I realize that taking the overdraft out of the next month’s income would reimburse whatever surplus categories had “really” paid for the overdraft, and would keep spending in check even further. Left-brained? Not hardly.

Customers have shown me some of their ingenious add-ons to the YNAB system (one person was sick of entering today’s date all the time!) that have improved it for them. And when you’ve made your money management worksheets customized to your needs, you’ll use them - and that’s really all that matters.

Whether you’re building your own from scratch, or improving upon some existing worksheets, money management is something that should follow a few basic rules: 1) quick, 2) simple and 3) effective. As you design (or customize) your own, make sure you ask yourself about those three points. Will using these worksheets make money management quicker? Simpler? More effective? If you can answer yes to all three of those questions then you’ve found yourself a pretty darn good solution. Your right brain will be needed. Don’t be afraid to have it shine when it comes to money management.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!