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[quote=Anonymous]Budgeting was very important when we had less wiggle room in our finances and we had expensive financial goals (like buying a house, buying a car, paying off student loans, etc) we were trying to achieve. I wrote this post back in 2017: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/135/305571.page#10945366

Now that we make far more than we want/need to spend, budgeting isn’t as necessary. I keep an eye on my credit card balance, because I know if I owe more than x amount per month, I have to dig into my non-emergency fund savings. It’s fine from time to time, but if it happens too often, it eats into other things and creates the possibility that we’d have to do something drastic like dip into our emergency fund to pay the credit card bill in full. We do still track our spending closely, but that’s not the same as budgeting. To me, budgeting means looking at my money before spending to confirm that I have the funds allocated for the purchase, and if I don’t I either delay the purchase or I decide to spend less in another area, while tracking means categorizing after spending to know how much money I spent in what categories (and from there evaluating whether we’re spending in accordance with our values and goals/priorities, and if not, shift spending accordingly).

We’re working towards a home renovation now and it’s expensive enough that we need to shift back towards budgeting and that feels surprisingly tough. [/quote]

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