PMBOK defines cost budgeting as “allocating the overall cost estimates to individual work activities”.  And the definition of cost control is “controlling changes to the project budget”. Per Wikipedia, budget is defined as “the amount of money that is available for, required for, or assigned to a particular purpose” and control is “mastery or proficiency”. When reviewing the PMBOK, I realized that many mix the order of estimating a project and then setting the budget for the work to be performed.  What can happen in many cases is the budget is pre-set, however, when this happens, expectations are set with it.  Then estimates are determined and the two are usually not in-sync.  If this should happen, the next step would be to re-align expectations to de-scope the work and ensure the original budget is not exceeded.  In order to be successful, a cost management plan would be needed. If you are not in a position to practice these concepts at work, then try them at home.  After many months of analyzing cost expenditures at work, my light bulb went on.  I caught my husband telling me I take Project Management a little too far when I started recommending that we have monthly budget meetings so we could analyze all of our expenditures for the previous month and compare it against our budget.  My comment was “we do it at work, why not at home?”  Needless to say, we may not have mastered cost control yet, but it is working much better. And that’s “The Word” or Words.