You Need A Budget (ynab)

To many, the word "budget" brings to mine restrictions, guilt, punishment, and a general feeling of dread that they don't have control over their money, much less hit their budget goals. But this idea that a budget means setting hard limits on spending in various categories, then looking back every month to see if you were "good" or "bad" in adhering to those limits... it's all backwards!   Jesse has another way to look at "budgeting," or planning as he calls it. You give every dollar you have a job -- you look at what future expenses you know you have coming and put those dollars into categories to cover those expenses. Once you have your future expenses covered, then you start thinking about what else you'd like to do with your money: take a trip, buy some new clothes, maybe go out to a nice restaurant. Then, as life happens and your needs change, you can move the money around. It's not a failure that your spending doesn't perfectly adhere to some arbitrary category number, it just means you got new informa