I Budget Wrong — And It's the Best Financial Decision I've Made

I have my paper, my bank statements, my calculator... now I just need the will to keep a budget

Starting a budget may be hard mentally and emotionally but the mechanics behind them are usually pretty standard. How much you make that month minus how you much you will spend/save that month until you get to 0. But for whatever reason this concept was a struggle to me for years. Every month I would find myself trying to align the monthly transactions to what I was doing but it wasn’t coming out exactly right. If I made my car payment on the 29th but it wasn’t due until the 2nd, was that part of the July budget or the August budget? How do I budget in random income from eBay that I wasn’t expecting if the budget is already set? How do I track my overall spending since I use mostly credit cards and pay them off each month?

It was a nightmare. Using options like Mint or YNAB just frustrated me because categories would not align where I wanted or an Amazon return would be labeled as “income” and my brain did not qualify that as income. These set systems did not work for me at all. Due to my constant irritation with manually updating these apps or trying to change my habits to align to them, I started to devise my own system of budgeting in Apple Numbers. I chose to modify the standard Apple Numbers template as I tend to be a prolific Apple user and just as an app can be accessed from anywhere I could access Numbers from all of my devices.

Disclosure: What you are about to see is actually crazy. Truly. Even as I show you my set up I cringe at the feedback I know this is going to elicit of how insane it is. But what I am hoping is that if there are parts of the budgeting process that you find particularly frustrating that the odd ways I go about budgeting might spark some ideas of new things to incorporate with yours.

Added Bonus: Included are some steps that I take that follow more traditional financial advice. Just as an ending palette cleanser.

Let's dive in!

Unhinged Step 1: I Do Not Budget Monthly, I Budget in 30-45 Day Time Periods

I'm just going to come out the gate strong and let the psychotic nature of my budget fully hit you. You are probably thinking "isn’t 30 days the same as a monthly" or "how in the world you do have a 45 day period". It sounds similar on the surface. The time and income incorporated in the budgets is generally the same as a monthly budget, however the starting days and ending days are usually very different.

For instance, these are some of the titles of my previous budgets of 2025:

Budget: 8/8/25-9/5/25

Budget: 9/5/25-10/3/25

Budget: 10/3/25-11/14/25

Your biggest question is probably "Why not just do monthly?". And I would say for most people that does make the most sense for understanding a budget. I tried doing the same thing starting out my budgeting journey and it actually worked very well at first. The reason? I was paid on a semi-monthly bases not bi-weekly basis.

The semi-monthly paychecks were easy to budget a singular month around as I was able to always know that I got the money on the 30th/1st and 15th and therefore which bills would come from each paycheck during the month. There was also no "extra" paycheck month as this led to 24 payment cycles as opposed to the more common 26.

But when my company was acquired we went to the more standard bi-weekly salary payments. Quickly I was having trouble accounting for which part of the month should be paid when. In January I might receive my first paycheck of the month on the 3rd, but by May it was coming in on the 13th. I couldn't easily figure out the same bills getting paid on the same paycheck as I had before.

I also encountered fatigue when trying the "budget by paycheck" method. I did not like the idea of having the money split up to make sure I had enough for the next paycheck. This made it seem like I would have no money at all for the paycheck that included car payment, mortgage, electric, and insurance.

My solution? Created periods based on when I was paid to budget for the entire timeframe. Most of these periods will be around a 30 day timeframe but for those months where there is 1 extra paycheck I tend to just extend the window of the budget to include that money. With the extra 15 days in the period, I usually keep my expenses to whatever other monthly subscriptions will come up again in the period and budget to save the rest of the cash.

I know it's odd but this sincerely is what changed me from being stressed trying to budget correctly each month to tracking with no issues. It might be worth a try for you if you are struggling!

Unhinged Step 2: I keep a rolling budget

I do not have a fixed budget. There I said it. While you scream in horror about how a budget can’t even work if not fixed let me explain. The income that I have to work with each period is (mostly) fixed, but the expenses and how it will be used are not. What does that mean? That means that when I set the basics of my budget for the time period I am working in that I make estimates of where everything should go to balance out to 0. But what if I get income I didn’t expect? Or what if I forgot an annual expense that came up this month? These things are accounted for as the period progresses. If I receive extra income and the budgeting period is actually looking to be less spendy than planned, I budget it to additional savings. If I get an expense I didn’t expect like an unexpected birthday gift to budget for? I see if other categories are close to going over budget and plan for the amount to cover it to come from there or other income I received that I didn’t expect.

A very rigid structure where each item was not coming in at or under budget every month left me feeling like I was failing at budgeting. This system gives me the flexibility to succeed as long as I follow one guiding principal: the money I have in income is all that I have to use. Meaning there is no expectation that I can pull from savings or take on credit card debt if the stars don’t align how I want for the month. The flexibility can only be made to where the established income is going, NOT how much income there will be to use.

Be advised: This advice is not for those who hate repetitive tasks

Unhinged Step 2: I manually enter into a spreadsheet everything I spend

If you are someone who is never going to take the time to do this just ignore this step completely. But some of you may be like me. While some apps have very useful tools, I find that if things aren’t exactly how I want things to be presented to me I completely disengage with it. Now that I have created a spreadsheet where everything makes sense to me I actually enjoy watching the numbers go where they belong (enjoyment may come from the fact I have a degree in Finance so on some level numbers and spreadsheets have always spoken to me, please keep this in mind). My routine is to enter my spending into my spreadsheet in the morning before work or at night while I am getting ready for bed and winding down for the night. I do this by reviewing all of my credit cards for expenses made (we will talk about that later) and making sure I have the right numbers for what has been spent. I do pre-load all expenses that are fixed for the budget period at the time of putting together the budget so the only manually things will be variable expenses or if there is something that changes to one of the fixed items.

Unhinged Step 3: I do not budget for expected extra income when the time period begins, but as the month progresses.

Since I keep a rolling budget (as in the amount I have to spend is fixed but not necessarily the categories within them), changes are actually expected to me in the month. Sometimes I will even leave say $200 banked in the spreadsheet not spent anywhere because I get the feeling something is coming up this month I am forgetting (and I am almost never wrong: such is life). But for the most each time period I zero out the budget with my corporate income for the month paying for all of my expenses. Now what happens if I receive a birthday check of $100? Or maybe that friend I lent money to 6 months ago just Venmo’s me the $50 they owed me? I also keep many items listed for sale continuously on places like Poshmark and eBay, but have no timeframe of when anything will actually sell. Well for these instances I add them to the budget as the money comes into my possession and then add them to the budget somewhere. Usually that is in a category where I know I am close to the line of going over or I add it into the savings bucket to be put away at the end of the time period.

This forces me to live within my means and not set an expectation that extra money has to come in in order to make the budget work. I find it freeing to know that the budget isn’t reliant on my putting in extra effort somewhere or praying someone bestows a gift on me to make the numbers happen!

Unhinged step 5: I do not have anything on AutoPay

Before you really lose it if you weren’t already, I have never missed a payment ever. Part of this is because the way that I keep a budget is so labor intensive that it requires me to be clocked in to each and every financial transaction I make. But I have found for when I have had things like car or mortgage payments I did not see the point in waiting for over a week to make the payment if I had the money for it right then (and with things like car payments using simple interest I actually pay less interest by paying it sooner!).

This also has allowed me to have greater awareness of what is coming out each period. If I have to manually go in and pay my electric bill each time I will see the changes month to month and if my bill is trending higher than it did at the same time last year. This is helpful information to help stop spending habits before they can get out of control.

Unhinged Step 6: I use credit cards for every purchase

Dave Ramsey disciples close your eyes. But I am all about those credit card points. As someone who likes to travel twice a year, those credit card points are game changing in making that happen for me. But I am also two things:

1. Very locked into my finances

2. Very disciplined.

If you have had credit card debt in the past than this is not an option for you. I am a credit card person. Part of why this system works for me is that I am not blindly spending on the cards. I manually enter into the budget any expense that is done on the credit card, so I see the effect that spend has on the overall budget (and also allows me to feel the cost of my spending that not tracking or using apps was not giving me before).

Not-So Unhinged Step 7: All saving is automated and done prior to executing the budget

My brain is truly the upside down place. While I do not use AutoPay for expenses, I do have everything automated when it comes to saving. In the direct deposit I have set up for my salary, I have automated the money being sent to 401k, Roth IRA, Health Savings Account, and High Yield Savings Account (Emergency Fund). That way when I make my budget I am not stressed about having to figure out how to find savings for the month as the decision has already been taken out of my hands. It also takes away the urge to use what was planned for savings and move it into an expense category that is getting too high.

Force those savings before making the budget that way you can't steal that money from yourself!

Not-So Unhinged Step 8: I use a zero based budget

Here is where I bring it back to normalcy. While the process of how I track the expenses and income over the periods might be odd, it still always ends up zeroing out at the end of the period. Every single dollar is accounted for in the budget and the total of the expected budget line items must equal my income for the period.

If I have leftover I didn't spend it will get transferred to savings. If I went over budget (almost always due to an unseen expense like car problems or house maintenance) then that money will come from my emergency fund to cover. This works for me as I do keep to my budget pretty strictly otherwise this method would be an issue if you see your emergency fund as a constant "get out of jail free" card for over-spending.

Not-So Unhinged Step 9: I have a spreadsheet of all reoccurring expenses for the month and year

One of the biggest issues I had when starting budgeting was that every budget period I would make a budget and have unexpected things come up that I hadn't planned for. Not things like car repairs or home maintenance (which you can't always know in advance), but things like yearly subscriptions that I did know would need to be renewed but completely forgot when it would happen. This led to months where I would start going over budget quickly if a credit card annual fee or my HBO yearly subscription hit my account when I wasn't expecting it.

Thankfully this was actually really simple to solve. I started keeping a tab in budget spreadsheet with all of my reoccurring expenses in a chart ordered by renewal date so that I could look before setting every budget and determine how much I would need. I also copy over all of the monthly bills that are reoccurring so that way they are already pulled from my available pool of money and I don't start thinking I have money to move around places when I actually don't.

Not-So Unhinged Step 10: My financial goals are displayed as part of my budget spreadsheet

This step gets to the root of why we budget in the first place - we have a goal we want to achieve with our finances. If we didn't care at all we wouldn't mess around with tracking our spending in the first place. Remembering why you are putting in all of this work and effort can be good while working on the budget and thinking through making purchases.

My goals are tied into building up my savings account. Seeing all of the things that I want to achieve using money (travel, new house, etc.) reminds me that if I can be saving money somewhere in my budget that that will help me to achieve these goals quicker.

Are you also crazy?

Type-A people may be in the process of recovering from the heart attack they just had reading through this, but some of the rest of you might have said: "Actually, I struggle with this aspect too. Maybe I should try it this way".

Whichever you are I hope this look into budgeting was interesting and helpful and has takeaways for you no matter where you are in your budgeting journey!