Baraka_Guru

Cyn, a lot of people can't do the budget thing despite their best efforts. It's not an easy thing to do. Personally, I haven't given it a fair chance yet, but I'm a big details guy, so I might actually enjoy it. But what you are doing in its place is a wise plan. Impulse buying is usually what gets people, and I completely agree with what you said about "saving" money on purchases vs. simply keeping it.

One alternative to a formal budget is what some people call the "un-budget." Rather than map out your limits ahead of time and then compare goals vs. outcome at the end of a period, the un-budget (one of them, anyway) is to do a "debriefing" on each month to see what you took in and what you spent and where (especially in a well-organized "snapshot" format). At least looking at where your money is coming from and where it is going month to month is far better than not looking at it at all.

For example, if at the end of each month you notice you keep spending too much money on fast food, you might eventually cutback consciously over time. If you simply don't care to know what you're spending in this respect, you just might keep it up and not ever realize how much fast food is draining your finances. Five to ten dollars here and there doesn't look like much if it appears intermittently on your bank or credit-card statement, but if it actually adds up to $100 to $200 per month or more, it suddenly looks like a bad habit.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot