RESOURCES:
Budgeting for First Responders
and Police Officers

Think about a budget like a SWAT team. SWAT teams do extensive planning before they even walk out the door. At my old department they had to have an operations plan done before they could even walk out the door for the raid. This is very similar to starting your zero-based budget before the month begins. That is your “write it down” phase of budgeting. You’re planning for the month, before it starts, to see if you have everything ready to begin and tackle the month.

Your Budget Debrief

Once that SWAT team gets back from the raid one of the first things they do is their after action plan, or debrief. Did everything they think was going to occur during the raid, actually occur, or should they change up the planning for the next SWAT raid (i.e. next month’s budget).

That’s where this budget stuff starts to get a little more technical because we can’t just write it down and hope it works out. We have to start tracking every dollar throughout the month as well. We have to debrief, or determine our after action plan for the month by following up throughout the month to ensure that what we planned for actually happened. Was it good, or do we need to change things up a little next month to ensure the budget balances properly?

Budgeting Identifies Opportunity

Your BUDGET is one of the first ways to discover where you are potentially wasting money. Seeing the dollars on paper may shock you, but once you find out where those areas of waste are, you will see the items that need to be worked on. You gain control of your money in order to start making your money work for you instead of against you.