Budgeting: Is it More About Yes or More About No?
Your perspective of budgeting is dependent on how you answer the question listed above. There are some people who think budgeting is all about no. No spending. No entertainment. No fun. While any good must have its fair share of occasions where it says no, a good budget is not about saying no. Instead, an effective budget is about appropriately using no to help you achieve a yes you would really like to accomplish in life.
A good budget must utilize the word no.
Consider the following illustration. A man goes down to the river to enjoy an afternoon fishing. A friend comes by and asks if he can use the river to wash his face. Of course, the man is benevolent, so he allows the man to come and dip his head into the cool river. A few moments later, another friend is passing his way and makes the same request. All throughout the day the man provides strangers, friends, and relatives an opportunity to rinse in the river. He is able to do so because the river provides an unlimited (to a certain extent) amount of water.
But a budget is not like the river because you are dealing with a limited resource. Budgeting is more like a man with a pie.
A man goes to town to buy a pie. As he looks at the pie, his mouth begins to water. Then, as he prepares to take a bite, a friend passes his way and asks for a piece of the pie. He quickly agrees and cuts the man a piece of pie. Before long, there comes another and another until only one piece is left. The man had told his family he would bring them pie, but there is no longer enough. The problem is that by saying ‘yes’ to his friends, he indirectly said ‘no’ to his family.
Budgeting | The Yes and No Factor
Since money is a limited resource (in the sense that a dollar can only be used once before you must earn another one), each dollar represents the number of yeses we have available to use. A man who makes $3,500 can say yes to 3,500 things that cost $1. Beyond that number, he must say no.
The problem with North American culture is that credit cards and loans have made people believe that they have an unlimited number of yeses. If they run out of money, they just go borrow more.
What if I say ‘yes’ too often?
If you say yes more than you can should, then you can improve your finances by taking away your ability to say yes when you cannot afford it. As an example:
- While some people properly manage credit cards, others would be better off if they stopped using a credit card. A credit card simply allows you to say yes to a purchase when you should have said no.
- Other people say yes too often when they go grocery shopping. Limiting the number of trips you make to the grocery store would be a good way to remove your opportunity to say yes.
Each of us have occasions we say yes when we know we should say no. A structured budget will help curb reckless spending.
I believe a written budget is a very important component of a financial plan. I’ve experienced it. I believe it’s important because with a budget you can predict and forecast when you want to say yes and when you must say no. I want to say yes when it comes to family needs, so I budget. I want to say yes when it comes to taking a family vacation, so I budget. I want to have money to contribute to the church, so I budget. I want to help pay for my kids’ college, so I budget.
A budget tells you when you should say yes and when you should say no. Budgeting is not about saying ‘no,’ but about choosing when to say ‘yes’.
What do you think? Is budgeting more about saying yes, or more about saying no?
I strongly believe that a good budget is about saying “Yes!”.
The entire problem with budgeting is that people think of budgeting as saying “No!” and thus avoid it. No one would avoid budgeting if they appreciated how many powerful and life-affirming yeses it permits.
The people opposed to effective money management are the people who develop television commercials (obviously aimed at encouraging mindless spending). How many television commercials promote a “No!” message? The people who develop commercials go with “Yes!’ messages because they know from market research that that is what works.
If the people promoting saving did the same thing, we would not have a saving problem, in my view. This is the entire deal, in my assessment. Human psychology matters.
Rob
@Rob
I love this quote “No one would avoid budgeting if they appreciated how many powerful and life-affirming yeses it permits”. I completely agree.
Budgeting is definitely about saying yes and no. Otherwise people would never donate money, or basically have any fun.
I am a firm believer of balance. So many extreme-savers are so judgmental over people taking what they believe to be an extravagant vacation or whatever. Everyone has different priorities and value systems. I personally have vacation as part of my budget saving. Everyone allocates their money differently.
I will say though that I do know plenty of people that are broke and they decide to pack their bags and travel somewhere because they ‘deserve a break’. That I totally disagree with. We don’t take vacations or buy anything if we cannot pay for it that month. I think our culture and economy is plain broke.
“I will say though that I do know plenty of people that are broke and they decide to pack their bags and travel somewhere because they ‘deserve a break’.”
You should go back and read my “Language of the Perpetual Poor” post from a couple years ago. I write about these very people. Adults need to be more honest with themselves; we don’t “deserve” most of the stuff we accumulate. We are blessed beyond belief, yes, but certainly not entitled.
I think budgeting is about learning to say no so that you can say yes to the things that you really want.
I agree with Buffie. The immediate reaction should be a “no” to all purchases because most likely that instinct to buy will pass and the item be long forgotten. After saying “no” day in and day out, eventually you have a big nest egg of “yes” so when the emergency comes or that big purchase is necessary, you can say “yes” without hesitation.
A lot of people ignore budgeting nowadays and find themselves in more and more debt
Great article! Budgeting is all about saying no to certain things in the SHORT-TERM so you can yes to the important things (to you) in the longer-term!
I’m not sure if it is so much “yes/no” to me rather than “if/than” If I buy lunch today I’ll bring lunch the rest of the week to make up for it. If I skip buying these jeans today I’ll be closer to my vacation goal, etc.
Budgeting is about yes/no or wants and needs. Your have to say yes to the needs first, housing, food, etc and what’s left over can be used for the wants stuff, vacations, etc.
How many times you say yes to the needs my limit the number of yeses you can say to the wants.
Prioritizing what is important to you is also helpful. If it costs me three “no’s” in exchange for a big “yes” that is important to me, I can make that decision. But it is a trade off and if you are going to avoid credit cards, you need to make these choices, wise choices…
I think it also helps if you have someone along with you to help you when you say “yes” too often. Sometimes I have that problem; I convince myself that I “need” something. Another method to add to the yes/no is counting. If you take, let’s say, more than 5-10 seconds to give yourself a firm “yes” then it’s an automatic no. It’s not fool proof, but it works sometimes.
Great post! I really feel like budgeting isn’t as much about ‘yes’ versus ‘no’ than it is about simply making a decision. This decision is to actually take a look at income and expenses instead of just spending and hoping that there will be enough at the end of the day/week/month to cover all the bills.
It’s a decision to be proactive with your income instead of reactive to a bad situation. Years ago I was eating lunch with a close friend and we were talking about bills and money in general (or lack of it). When I pulled out my planner and had a list of everything I had to pay for the month, she was astonished. She thought I had a ton of expenses and didn’t see how I could possibly pay all of those things. However, through further discussion, I found out that she had never listed all the things that she owed each month. As it turns out, her monthly expenses were much larger than mine – as well as a much larger percentage of her income. She decided then that making a list wasn’t actually a bad idea. She had simply never considered it.
The decision we make when we budget is to plan out how we will spend our money before we ever see it in the bank. We can decide to pay and be current on our bills, we can decide to save money for a car/college/retirement, etc. We decide that we might not actually need to eat out every single day of the week. I guess, in effect, we are deciding to say Yes to ourselves and the creditors we have agreed to pay.
I think the yes/no also depends on the situation. Ordinarily, I consider budgets to be about “yes”. I’m not a spender so by putting entertainment or clothes in my budget I make myself go out and have fun or keep my wardrobe up do date, two things that I wouldn’t do if I didn’t force myself to do. But right now our budget feels like it’s all about “no”. We just bought a house and are preparing to start trying to get pregnant, so the list of both needs and wants blossomed. When we break the wish list up into months it extends uncomfortably far. I like that the budget makes us slow down and be very deliberate and not half-hazardly settle into our new house; but my husband feels very constrained that we can’t take care of everything RIGHT NOW.
I had a hard time convincing my husband that budgeting was the right choice for us at the beginning of our relationship. He was scared to death I’d tell him, “NO, you can’t ____.”
Meanwhile, I was upset because I wanted to say yes: YES, we can save money! YES, we can retire. YES, we can share with others. YES, we can make choices in our lives–because we’ve budgeted and planned for emergencies, fluxes in income, etc.
I’m so thankful we kept at it and now look forward to our budget talks.
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