3 Ways ‘Budget Culture’ Is as Bad as Diet Culture — and What To Do Instead
Written by
Nicole Spector
Edited by
Zuri Anderson
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Nearly every financial expert around champions budgeting, arguing that it’s a must if you’re building wealth or getting out of debt. But how deeply are they reflecting on not only the techniques of budgeting, but the culture centered upon it, and its potentially harmful traits?
Dana Miranda, a personal finance journalist and the author of “You Don’t Need a Budget: Stop Worrying about Debt, Spend without Shame, and Manage Money with Ease,” has written at length about how “budget culture” is toxic — as toxic as diet culture in the health and fitness world. In one of her Healthy Rich newsletters, Miranda outlined four ways budget culture is as bad as diet culture — and what to do instead.
Self-Deprivation Doesn’t Work
Miranda asserted “budgeting doesn’t work.” That may be true for some, but there are a lot of people who have successfully rebuilt their financial lives and gotten out of debt by using budgeting.
So, budgeting as a whole should not be ruled out; that said, the concept of budgeting does have problematic areas. For one, it encourages self-deprivation — and that generally doesn’t work for people, at least not without consequences. Feeling deprived can warp our thinking and hinder our mental health.
“Just like we can’t starve ourselves of food in the long term, we can’t starve ourselves of life-giving spending, either,” Miranda wrote. “For most budgeters, the restriction eventually becomes too much, the budget fades away and we snap back to where we were until the next fad rolls along.”
It Feeds Into the Fantasy of Being ‘Rich’ — Without Clarity Or Specificity
Budgeting is often used as a key tactic to help build wealth or, more crassly, get rich. Miranda is not anti-getting-rich, but she does take issue with the fantasy of getting rich — a fantasy that isn’t helpful because, like all fantasies, it’s not grounded in reality, specifics or clarity.
“It’s a ‘fantasy’ because ‘rich’ is a moving target,” Miranda wrote. “When budget culture convinces you money is the end goal, that you could always have more and that there’s a right way to get there that you just don’t know yet, you get into a never-ending loop of aiming for the fantasy of being rich — a line that will always move to be just a little better off than you are now.”
The Type of Success That Budget Culture Celebrates Is Not Always Accessible
Were you to decide you had met the end goal of budgeting — perhaps by achieving that elusive, shifty status of “rich” — what would success look like for you?
Perhaps you’d have more power at work, more privilege in society and no consequences from past debt or other financial issues? It may not be that easy. Miranda argues that the way we define and earn success is not set up for equal access.
“Budget culture idealizes and advises for a version of richness that includes things like power at work, freedom from domestic labor, well-rounded education, debt elimination, homeownership, credit and other things rich, straight white guys tend to have access to more readily than anyone else,” she said.
Miranda cited research that found white adults are twice as likely to have invested than families headed by Black or Hispanic adults and also highlighted the fact that though more women have a bachelor’s degree than men, they still earn less than men.
3 Methods That Could Serve You More Than a Traditional Budget
Miranda advocates for being “anti-budget culture”; however, you don’t need to go to that extreme in order to save money and build wealth in a healthy way. Consider Miranda’s following tips.
- Practice “conscious spending.” “Spend as much as you want on whatever you want — and check in with yourself occasionally to see how that spending impacts your life,” Miranda wrote. “If it’s not making you feel good, make a change.”
- Get comfortable with uncertainty. “When you believe the wrong financial moves will destroy your life, you’re understandably desperate to know and do the right things,” Miranda wrote. “You have to get out of the comfort zone of those illusory rules and get OK with uncertainty. Because that’s real life.”
- Trust yourself. “Trust yourself to use money in a way that’s right for you,” Miranda wrote. “That’s the greatest act of resistance you can commit, and it’s the first step to real financial freedom — a life free from worrying about money, for everyone.”
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