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Clint Redwood's avatar

I haven’t read the article you refer to, but my issue with budgeting is primarily philosophical - it implicitly assumes scarcity, whereas I try to hold a philosophy of abundance.

I also have, as Christine described, “a reactionary response against anything that feels restrictive” and the word “discipline” sends me into shivers from having people “who knew what was best for me” try to push me, a square peg, into a round hole for most of my life.

I now seek what Carl Rogers calls “an internal locus of evaluation” - taking information from outside sources but not external judgments. (Easier said than done I’d add - very much a work in progress)

You mention what might be called “weaponised budgeting” as a means to shame millennials/genZ for suffering from the structural inequalities ingrained in the system, which I still overhear from some boomers, ironically sitting in coffee shops sipping their own lattes.

There is a subtlety between a hipsters avocado toast and the hedonic treadmill, and I think we need to be able to recognise that both unsustainable hedonic spending and strict budgeting are both scarcity based approaches to life.

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Jen Zug's avatar

I love YNAB and have been using it for maybe close to ten years? Their concept of “give every dollar a job” was an effective mindset shift away from the crystal ball style of budgeting future dollars that don’t exist yet. It’s been a super flexible tool through years of self employment and income fluctuations.

Having a budgeting mindset has also helped me in my work (creating project budgets) and running a small business (keeping track of lean profit margins).

That being said, budgeting and restrictive spending are often weaponized against people living on low incomes, as if poor people could rise out of poverty if they were simply more responsible and spent less. This leads to a privileged mindset of determining who deserves help.

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