Ep 472: Why You Don’t Need A Budget To Be Good With Money
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When you decide what your priorities are for how you want to work and what kind of work you want to do, then that can drive your decisions rather than having to go after work to make a certain amount of money to support a certain kind of life.

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today on Her Money. I'm Jean Chatzky. Very glad to have you with us. Have you ever said to someone, I'm so bad with money or felt I'm so bad with money? I can't tell you how many times I've actually heard people say that. And what they generally mean is that no matter how many budgeting apps you download or how many spreadsheets you build, nothing ever really seems to stick. But maybe, Jo?

Just maybe the problem isn't you. Maybe the problem is budgeting itself. And I know this might sound crazy coming from me, but today I want to try something radical. I want you to imagine a world where you don't need a budget. Close the app. Toss the spreadsheet. Let's hit reset.

Because as my guest today, Dana Miranda, writes in her new book, You Don't Need a Budget, Stop Worrying About Debt, Spend Without Shame, and Manage Money With Ease, it is possible. Dana is a personal finance author, a certified educator in personal finance, and one of the boldest voices in this industry. We are going to take a very quick break.

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Thank you so much for having me, Jean. And thank you. That's so kind to say. How do you define budget culture? And why do you think it is that it is...

so off-putting to so many? Budget culture is, to me, it looks a lot like what we see in diet culture. So I parallel it to the way that we talk about food and bodies quite a bit. And it is the dominant paradigm of how we approach money in our culture. It's focused often on restriction and shame and

and individual responsibility. And there's kind of a perfectionist streak through it. You were talking about always feeling like you're bad with money. That really comes from budget culture messaging that says you're never quite getting it right. There's always something more you can be doing. And it's very similar to what we see in diet culture in the way that no matter what kind of dieting you're doing, what kind of exercising, whatever your body looks like, there's always some change that you could make to be a little closer to some

elusive ideal. Have we seen a rise in budget culture over the last few years? Have you tracked sort of the progress of this?

I think a little bit. It's become a lot probably noisier and more prominent in people's lives because of social media and personal finance blogs putting that conversation in front of people. And really, even since the early 90s, we've seen kind of a rise in people talking about personal finance.

in everyday lives more, which is a great thing. But because that sort of budget culture attitude underlies the way that we approach money, that conversation has been very focused on that restriction and shaming and perfectionism. And the prevalence of budgeting apps and money management apps, I think also kind of drives home that message that all you need is just the right budgeting method to get your money under control.

I have always been a little bit of a contrarian on this and

My attitude has really always been, I don't care if you have a budget. I care that you save first. I care that you save money. And if you are consistently saving enough for your short-term emergencies and your long-term future, do whatever you want with the rest of your money. It's not up to me. Buy the coffee if you want to buy the coffee. Buy the shoes if you want to buy the shoes. Just make sure.

that you're hitting those savings goals. That's the methodology that our Finance Fix program is built on. But I guess my question for you is, if not a budget, then what?

It's very similar to what you're talking about, which sounds a lot like reverse budgeting or anti-budgeting, kind of a pay yourself first method that people talk about, which is get your financial commitments and your financial goals in order. And then you don't have to track every dollar. You don't have to plan for every dollar and have that constant money stress for sure. And I think that is a simpler way to go. I also take it a step further and say you...

can decide what your financial commitments and goals will be. You don't have to be stuck with what is the typical advice in the space necessarily. Thinking about what makes sense for planning for your future, what makes sense for planning for what I call a comfort fund, which kind of encapsulates your potential financial emergencies, but also embracing potential opportunities. And

And so you can decide what kind of those numbers are, what those goals are, how much risk you want to take, what comfort means for you, and then use that sort of pay yourself first method to automate it. So you're not thinking constantly about your money and not thinking, if I buy this latte, what does it mean for my financial future? Sort of taking that step back and thinking.

I recommend, again, thinking in this parallel with dieting and diet culture, people look to instead of dieting, intuitive eating. So I recommend sort of an intuitive money management method that I call conscious spending. So instead of making a plan that decides what you're allowed to spend and what you're allowed to spend money on, and then tracking every dollar to essentially judge yourself against that set of rules that you made, to make a plan that decides what you're allowed to spend and what you're

Be more intuitive with your spending. And that pay yourself first method allows you to do that because you know that the money that you're spending is in essentially a safe to spend kind of

pile of money that you can spend without thinking about it. So allow yourself to buy things that maybe would be thought of as luxuries or impulse buys, like that kind of thing. Sort of let yourself do the things that you need to do to have the experience that you need to have rather than setting some sort of strict rules for yourself that say, like, I can't have takeout because I'm worried about my budget this month kind of thing. I love everything that you are saying in concept. Yeah.

And I worry about it in practice because we are this nation of under savers and over spenders. We've learned from behavioral finance that we're wired not to be good at this, right? We're wired to give into our impulsive demons. And I worry that if

if you don't have any rules, which it kind of sounds like where you're going, that people are not going to hit those saving benchmarks, which

I mean, gosh, one of the questions that I get asked more than any other is how much do I need to save? Just tell me, just tell me how much I need to save for my long-term future so that when I get to the end of the road, when I get to retirement, I'm gonna have enough money to live on. And so I have learned to just say 15%. You need to say 15%. You need to start when you're young and do it when you're older. And if you can't get to 15%,

early, then you got to pick it up a little bit later on. Why not adhere to rules like this? A really challenging thing about setting kind of one size fits all rules in personal finance is that they don't fit everybody. They're not a fit for everyone. And you're

desire to have that answer completely makes sense because in the personal finance space, like you said, people are looking for an answer because money is very complex and we are subject to a very complex, confusing environment.

financial system that often works against us, like the kind of impulse that you were talking about, the consumer culture that we live in often works against us, what we would intuitively really want to spend money on, right? And the financial systems that we're a part of, the job market that we're a part of, makes it hard to do that long-term savings and to know that we're going to have long-term financial stability. The cost of living that we're subject to makes it hard to

stick to our financial commitments and plan for the future and do the things that add luxury and comfort to our lives that we deserve to have to enjoy our lives. And so all of this is just very tricky and very sticky for people. And so they're looking for

the answer. And everybody's financial situation is so different. Our relationships with money are as unique as any individual relationships that we have in life. And so why I push back against having those kinds of rules is

from someone else is that no one else can ever quite know exactly what's right for you. And so striving to meet some set of rules like that is, I think, what fosters that shame that we so often feel around money that keeps people from talking about their financial situations, which is

At a larger kind of systemic level, that shame then keeps people from talking to each other about what they're experiencing. And it keeps us from understanding that this is not an individual problem, that our difficulties and our fear of not having financial security in old age is not because we are making the wrong financial decisions. It's because we're

We don't have the social safety nets in place that we need to take care of people and that most people don't make enough money to set aside enough money to live comfortably in old age after they can no longer work. And

When we don't have those conversations with people, when our relationships with money are shrouded in shame, we think that's just us doing something wrong. Why can't I get to that 15%, right? Instead of addressing the larger issues that would help everybody. Absolutely. This show exists because we recognize that we need safe places to have these financial conversations. So we're having this conversation on a regular basis because we're

It invites other people in. And even if you're listening rather than talking, that's a form of participating in a necessary dialogue about money. Essentially, I think what you're asking people to do is to participate.

set rules for themselves, right? To figure out what they need to do on their own in order to achieve the financial life that they are looking for. And it may not be 15%, right? There is some evidence that we push people to have emergency cushions that are three to six months when really you only need six weeks and evidence that maybe some people are over-saving for retirement because they still have a lot of money left.

when they die. As an individual, how do you have this dialogue with yourself to figure out what your own rules need to be? That is where I really start leaning into intuition, which is something that we

are not in our culture, are not very good at hearing and listening to. And so I recommend a lot of what we see more in sort of the self-improvement space, like mindfulness kinds of practices to really start listening to yourself and understanding what you want. Because especially in personal finance, if you have been just spending your whole life looking outward and looking for some set of rules that is supposed to be the right set of rules, you're

It's going to take a lot of work to start to even think about what do I want? What do I want my retirement to look like, right? How long do I want to work? How much money am I going to need? Where do I want to live? What do I want my day-to-day life to look like? I've gone through that process.

myself, where I've had periods in my life where I've earned very little money. I've had periods where I've earned a lot more money. And fluctuating through that in our culture, it's very tempting to just spend a lot of money when you have more money and then to restrict a lot when you don't have very much. And it's hard to find...

what it is that I actually want, what is the life that I actually want to shape. And regardless of how much money I have coming in, how can I use that money to support the life that I want to have day to day and in the future. And so it takes a lot of kind of inner work, personal work to start to listen to yourself and know what that experience is. Tell us how you did it. Because I think what you describe this idea that sometimes I make a lot of money, sometimes I've made...

a lot less is a very common reality for people. How did you get to a place where you knew what comfort meant to you and you could push back against those outside forces? It's an ongoing process for sure. One of the biggest things for me was deciding what I wanted work to look like. And I think that taking control of that can be really helpful because it's

When you decide what your priorities are for how you want to work and what kind of work you want to do, then that can drive your decisions rather than having to go after work to make a certain amount of money to support a certain kind of life. So...

Knowing that I have certain standards and certain boundaries around the kind of work that I want to do drives the amount of money that I can make. And then that helps me kind of understand like the life that I want to live. Like, for example, I know that I'm not going to be a

mid six figure earner probably for most of my career. And so when I went to buy a house, even though I really like living in the city, I knew that I didn't want to take on a mortgage for a house in the city. So I bought a house in a rural area where the cost of living is much lower, but I can own a home and I can have this stable housing situation that I can afford regardless of how my income fluctuates over the years as a writer.

So that's a big life decision that I made sort of based on having that kind of anchor. And for me, that's because work is something that's really central and important for me. I don't have children. And I think for a lot of people, maybe your family or your children, right? Like how you want that part of your life to look can be your anchor and you can make your decisions around that. I think that can be really helpful to find work.

What is that thing that you want to anchor your life around? And then how will that impact your financial situation? And then how can you use that financial situation to support the life that you want to have? It's a very interesting way of approaching it. We are going to take a very quick break. But when we come back, we're going to talk about how to quiet the noise around money and start to spend and behave a little bit more consciously. No budget required. Back in a sec.

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We are back with Dana Miranda, author of You Don't Need a Budget. So you are a

like me, have sort of leaned into this idea of reverse budgeting. For people who want to give it a try, how would you say they get started? First, I would start by getting the lay of the land of what's going on with your money so that you know where your money needs to go and any changes that you want to make. So in the book, I

lay out an exercise called a money map, which can largely look however you want it to. But I just offer some questions to help you understand what's going on with your money. So list your resources, which is your income and your assets, any community and debt resources that you have coming in and have access to. And then your financial commitments. So basically, like, where is your money going every month?

and your financial goals. And then sort of what's left is what I call a yes fund. That's what I was talking about earlier is your safe to spend fund.

And understanding that, especially that play between your resources and your commitments can help you see where you might want to make changes so that if you're having trouble meeting your financial commitments every month, what maybe needs to change about those. And that's, you know, that's the big things. That's your big cost of living things, your housing and bills that you're paying, debt payments that you're making, things that you have committed to someone that you're going to make a payment.

So look at those and see where changes might need to be made. If you can make changes to your income or other resources, right? How can you adjust that so that's comfortable? And then look at your financial goals. What do you want to save in investment accounts and retirement accounts for your comfort fund and for what a lot of people call short-term savings goals? I call big spending goals. So for...

spending that you want to do in the future, like travel, gifts, events, things that are outside of the scope of your everyday spending that you kind of need to be prepared for. So once you know the wiggle room that you have between your resources and commitments and the goals that you want to achieve, then you can set those goals like we were talking about, right? If you want to put

15% towards some kind of savings? How are you going to allocate that between your comfort fund and your retirement accounts and other goals that you have? And that's the part that you can then automate as a reverse budget, right? If you get a regular paycheck or whatever income you have coming in, automatically sort of direct that toward those goals. And

direct some toward an account to cover your commitments, knowing how much those will be each month. And then what's left is your yes fund. And then that is something that you can easily spend freely without the stress of tracking every dollar. Tell me more about the yes fund and how it works. I just, I like the name of it. I think, you know, that's very positive. There's money in my yes fund. I can do this. Yes. How do you move money into it? How do you track it? How do you...

you decide what's a yes and what's not a yes. Get really granular with us. Sure. So it can be metaphorical or theoretical. It doesn't have to be an actual account or something. I actually like it as a separate bank account. So you have like an account for your commitments. You have

accounts or buckets, depending on kind of how you manage your money for your goals. And then you can have a separate account or bucket for your Yes Fund. And that you can do with separate bank accounts, which might feel complicated for some people. You could do it with an app that essentially puts a skin over your bank accounts to create those buckets. There's a lot of money management apps that can do something like that. The

entire idea of the Yes Fund for me was inspired by a banking app that actually had something called a safe to spend fund that I was using until it got acquired by a big bank and they just sunsetted the whole thing, which made me so sad. But I was like, this needs to exist. And I am not an app developer. So let's just help people create it in whatever way makes sense for them. But in that app,

There was a spending account and a savings account, basically. And so the savings account, then they sort of put a skin on that you could have different buckets for goals. It's all just in a single kind of physical account, which was helpful because then you don't have to manage a bunch of account numbers and things. And then...

You would set what your monthly bills were. So those commitments and it would automatically as money came in, fund those bills so that when you paid them, that money was already there and set aside for you. And then it had the safe to spend fund with everything else. And that just like that way of organizing your money for me felt.

really easeful and it just felt very intuitive. And also doing a money map that way can help you see if there's a mismatch between your resources and commitments. If you're not able to save because you just don't have enough money to pay your bills every month, right? How are you going to address that? What additional resources might you look for or what changes can you make so that you can work toward your goals and be able to do the spending that you want to?

Well, I know that one of the issues you have with budgeting is this whole concept of fixed expenses. You say, first of all, there is no such thing as fixed expenses, but also that fixed expenses, quote unquote, restrict us from going after our dreams. I think of my homeowners association dues as a fixed expense, right? It's the same every single month. So what do you mean?

I talk about those as financial commitments because it is something that you commit to, like my mortgage, right? I took out a loan to buy my house and so I have to make that mortgage payment.

If that is not working for me, I can make changes. I can decide to just not pay it. And I have to understand the consequences of that, right? That I will lose my home eventually. The bank will take it. I will destroy my credit. There are a lot of consequences to that, but it is an option. But also I...

I could sell my house eventually, right? There are things that I could, changes that I could make. One smaller change that I made recently was canceling a bunch of streaming services. So those were commitments that I had every month that I was paying $10 to $20 to several streaming services and was able to knock out like $80 in monthly commitments by getting rid of those. And just writing all that stuff down can help you see that.

you know, how that stuff adds up, especially things like that kind of the price creeps up over time. So Netflix, I think when I signed up was like $9 and I realized recently it was over 20. So you see those things and you can start to see what kinds of changes might have an impact on your bottom line and what might not, right? If getting rid of those streaming services eliminates

all of my entertainment and makes my days very empty and boring, then that $80 might not be worth it. But I could look at that and decide that is money I would like to put back into my Yes Fund and do something else with it. I want to come back and wrap this conversation with two things. First of all, just a question that brings us back to where we started. For some people doing some kind of budgeting, whether you do it with an app, whether you do it with a program like Finance Fix,

People really like that it gives them a sense of control. In our program, we have many, many people who come to it because they feel out of control with their spending and through our process of tracking. And then we have a process that we call tag and transfer. So every week you're moving money that you're not spending into debt repayment or into savings.

They like it. They like to watch the money add up. I like to watch the money add up. I like to go visit my savings accounts and see that the balance is higher than it was the time before.

What do you say to those folks? Is there a middle ground between what you're teaching and what they're feeling? I think there's more than just a middle ground. I think there's just a spectrum of what will work for people. And I think that if you're feeling completely out of control with your money, I'm not going to tell any individual person that you should not do this because this is sort of what

I am critiquing in the personal finance space in general is all the shoulds that we face. And so I don't offer an actual alternative method or program or something for people to do. I'm just offering observations and questions to ask to make sure that you're doing what works for you rather than just picking up something that worked for someone else.

And so I think that there's room for what works for everyone. And the only thing that I would say to get probably more to sort of a middle ground is to ask, one, why are you feeling out of control with your money in the first place? Is it a matter of balance?

management style, essentially? Is it because you need a new way of managing your money? Or is there a larger force at play because you're not being paid equitably or because you live in an economically depressed area where it's difficult to get the resources that you need? Or because you're having trouble accessing something like health care or the benefits that you need?

are you feeling out of control because of something outside of you and you're just internalizing it and trying to, which is something we very much do, right? You feel anxious living in this world and you take control of what you can take control of. But that often doesn't actually give you control. It's just gives you something to focus on in this moment. And if you find that that is not the case, that you really do just like order. I like making lists. That's why I like the money map. I can list all the information in front of me and see it all in one place.

and that's what you're looking for, then do the thing that works for you. I think that's generally the answer when people say, but budgeting works for me. Then I say, go ahead and do it. I just want to make sure that we're taking a moment to pause and ask, why are you doing this? So that we're not just sort of restricting ourselves and trying to force ourselves into some kind of discipline because we think that's what we should be doing.

Dana Miranda, you are going to come back and answer questions from our listeners later in the week. Let me thank you in advance for that. And thanks so much for a really interesting conversation.

Thank you so much for having me and for being willing to go there. Absolutely. The book is called You Don't Need a Budget. If you love this episode, please give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. We always value your feedback. And if you want to keep the financial conversations going, join me for a deeper dive.

Her Money has two incredible programs, Finance Fix, which is designed to give you the ultimate money makeover, and Investing Fix, which is our investing club for women that meets biweekly on Zoom. With both programs, we are leveling the playing fields for women's financial confidence and power. I would love to see you there.

Her Money is produced by Haley Pascalides. Our music is provided by Video Helper and our show comes to you through Megaphone. Thanks for joining us and we'll talk soon.