Can you manage your cash without a budget?
TLDR: Yes. :) Common wisdom says that you need a budget in order to be "good" with money. After all, if you don't have a budget, how can you keep yourself from spending money so that you can save and invest in your future? Before we get to that, we need to understand why budgeting has such a prevalent place in the common wisdom. Budgeting helps many people prevent unnecessary spending and enables beneficial savings and investing, especially if they have not kept a tracking routine for their finances. By setting categories of where money goes, people get a view of their projected cash flows. They may become more focused and motivated to keep within the spending limits of each category. Having their savings or investments contributions arranged in advance helps them actually put those funds in accounts where their money can earn them more money. Or, they might find that consulting their remaining budget is not enough for them to curb their low value spending and they must ...