humbled by budgeting / impulse control
I've been using YNAB for awhile, but never really as a serious budget. I like seeing the overall bars go up when they do (and when they go down, take it as a big red flag), but the overall envelope style of budgeting hasn't quite hit for me.
If you aren't familiar with the concept, by taking all income (usually your paychecks) and "assigning" them to either virtual or real envelopes with specific purposes (ex. 'eating out' or 'flights') you can have a set max to all your spending, and can easily plot out savings or have money 'set aside' for emergencies and such.
In practice, I never got myself into the habit of tracking individual transactions as they happened, resulting in the auto tracking from linking pulling in a whole load of unresolved transactions that I have to tediously go through at the end of the week. The bigger problem is that afterwards, I can easily go 'over' an allocated envelope (food in SF is super expensive especially) - which then requires some creative envelope swaps.
You could easily blame this on impulse control for me, but without absolving myself of blame, I find most of my spending is in social situations. Go out for a couple drinks and buy a round? That might be my normal alcohol budget blown right there.
And while there is the option "I can't afford it"1, there is still social pressure - you have to 'build the village', so to speak. Of course there are free and cheap things to do, and we do those things - but there are activities and events that will inevitably cost money.
Balancing social capital and real, in my wallet capital is still something for me to figure out. There are times where I get labeled as someone who 'never comes out' - but at the end of the day, I'm still trying to save for my future, while not compromising my present.
I read this chapter in The Wealthy Barber Returns like a decade ago↩