Dirty confession: I haven’t had a budget in years.
I think there are two ways to approach personal finance, and I’ve done both. One is a zero-based budget, where each dollar is assigned to a category and once you run out of money in a category, you don’t get any more until the next pay period or month. The other way is to track every dollar you spend, so you can monitor trends and adjust as needed. Both work very well, if you’re diligent, but I think they work for different circumstances.
by Little Miss Moneybags