When you fail to stick to a budget, that tells you that you have done something wrong in writing it. If you go back and question what it is you did wrong, you will learn from the experience. Budget-writing needs to be viewed as an ongoing process.

I myself do not budget and wonder how budgets can help with spending. We can’t control the randomness in life. I like to set aside a fixed amount, like Kyle above suggested, and just spend the rest. Some have called that method a “budget” for savings rather than spending.

I set an amount that I want to save every month and have an automatic savings plan.

I put my bills on auto bill pay.

I charge all my expenses to my credit card and I make sure I spend roughly the same amount every month.

Tough times. Can you spare a buck or two. I shun drugs and alcohol so any donations will go to necessities.

Heck, I actually support the Wimmen’s Temperance Thingy advocating the elimination of alcohol in our society!!!! Booze causes so much misery and only numbs the brains of so many within the human herd whose brains appear to be naturally numb. For proof just peek at various politicians!!!

Oh. Budgets.

Gotta’ have money to have a budget.

Never had one. Never seemed to be suitable or applicable to my working-poor underclass life.

Hey!!! Wanna’ face a challenge? Try living out of your car. I learned the hard way to always own a pick-em-up truck with a camper shell over the bed to keep the wind and rain off the tender body.

Back in the late 1980s when full-time work paid only enough to chip in on a family’s rent, giving me cooking and cleaning privileges but with not enough room for me to sleep there….well, the 1975 Honda Civic (an itty bitty carlet) was my bedroom.

Budgets. Allocating scarce resources. Society does it by using money, generally. Some folks are great whiners and convince those with discretionary wealth to fork some over.

Drag a dirty whiney imp along with you and it’s relatively easy to get organized religion to hand you money and material items.

Even saw a large church give a decent car to a married couple with three waifs who came begging. Those were some really scummy scam artists that roamed from town-to-town begging and supporting their vile spawn and their drug habit.

Wonder if they budgeted?

Okay, herd. Here’s one method of budgeting based upon attitude vice writing down Arabic numerals (that are so much easier to use than the Roman type. Maybe you are one of those phreaks that can think hexadecimally but that talent likely allows you to earn the BIG bucks so forget about a budget and hire me to clean your firm at a livable wage, okay?).

Here’s what to do.

Live as cheap as you can. Pay the least amount of rent possible. Pay the least amount for everything. Some material possession are better bought with quality as or more important than price. Pay a little more with some goodies and the cost-per-use or cost over the goodies lifetime is a better bargain than buying cheap and having to replace the goody regularly.

After doing the above… attitude comes in. Before forking over your money ask yourself; do I really really absolutely gotta’ have this? Is it a necessity vice a want? Do I need the thingy or do I NEED it.

Let the answer be your guide.

Forego as many purchases as possible. Buy only what you have to survive. If you earn enough to live above abject poverty, to have a wee amount of comfort, go for it but….. look at your savings, that rainy day fund when your job disappears.

Weigh the amount of money mentally in your pocket ready to be spent and the amount in savings. Keep your savings amount in the back of your mind and weigh the two.

Be honest with yourself. Do you KNOW the few bucks in your pocket should go into savings? Well, put them there!!!

Okay… there’s the Obbop oblate-spheroid-style budget plan.

Designed by a life-long member of the class of folks who performs the labor that ignorami spewing “Jobs Americans won’t do” can utilize but could also probably function for those further up the socio-economic ladder/pyramid.

While I am here with babbling spewing upper-class on the mind I have a question. Hey, GW, where were YOU when I was steaming up the Saigon River with machine gun cradled wondering when the unfriendliness would arrive from the tree lines? When I returned the only job I could find for one with my skill-set was alongside the migrant workers in California’s central valley.

Where were you, Bush?

Budgets are cool if they work for a person, but I find that a lot of people avoid money management all together, because they think they NEED a budget and budgets DON’T work for them. So woot! to spreading the word on this!