Today I’m proud to introduce a guest post with a great infographic on budgeting from Jacob Merkley over at PowerOverLife. Jacob talks about much more than budgeting but his Budgeting 101 post is great. It’s linked in the article below and I encourage you to check it out after reading his post here.
Budgeting is one of the best ways to impact your finances and Jacob is going to take us on a short, encouraging journey on why we should be budgeting for the things we want to do in life.
Take it away, Jacob!
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins took their first steps on the moon and became instantly famous. In 1973, NASA reported that the total cost of the Apollo program was an incredible dollar amount, $25.4 billion to be exact (ExtremeTech).
Do you want to know how much that is, in today’s dollars? Drum roll please…it would be nearly $170 billion (West Egg)!
I now give you permission to gasp, drop your jaw, rip out your hair, pee your pants, or do whatever else you do when you are utterly shocked. That’s an incredible amount to get someone to the moon.
Well, it’s no mystery that the next space adventure will be getting a human to Mars. So how much will that trip cost? Keep in mind that we have done an incredible job at making technology and science advancements less expensive over the years. Yet there are proposed budgets ranging anywhere from $30 – $450 billion. Wow!
Flying to mars seems like the next great adventure and I hope that it will happen in my lifetime! It will be an event that all of us will look at, marvel, and be inspired by. I would imagine that NASA will need to save up for a few years to make the attempt. In other words, they will likely have to budget for it!
Saving For Your Own Adventures
With that comparison in mind, aren’t there events and adventures that we all really want to experience, marvel at and be inspired by? Getting married, having a child, going on a great vacation, etc.
These are all items that we need to budget for, unless you want to break the bank and go into debt, which I would never suggest doing. So before your plan for the rest of your life, take a short break and get into budgeting. It’s cool and will help you get to your own version of a Mars adventure!
