Cooking the Books podcast: How to budget without restriction

How do you take control of your money, while still having a fun life? Photo / 123RF

Each week BusinessDesk and the NZ Herald’s Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it’s the ways to make a boring budget a bit happier. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room - nobody likes the idea of a budget.

It immediately makes you think of cutting back, restricting, losing the little things that make life enjoyable.

But there’s also the reality that times are tough, and creating financial security means knowing where your money is going, and taking control of it so that you can have savings, and even investments.

So how do you take control of your money, while still having a fun life? We’ve got some techniques to help.

For the latest podcast I talked to Jessica Irvine, personal finance expert, and author of four books including the latest, The Money Diary.

For the interview, listen to the podcast here.

• If you have a question about this podcast, or a question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here, and Twitter here.

• Listen to the full interview on the Cooking the Books podcast. You can subscribe on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.