Budget Culture and the Dave Ramseyfication of Money

Budget culture is the damaging set of beliefs around money that rewards restriction and deprivation — much like diet culture does for food and bodies — and promotes an unhealthy and fantastical ideal of financial success.

The simplest problem with this approach is that budgeting, like dieting, doesn’t work. Restriction and deprivation are unsustainable; accurately tracking spending is hard; income fluctuates, and costs don’t operate on a perfect monthly reset. Budgets don’t account for the way lives work, so they’re hard to keep in our lives consistently.

The only sure way to make money is to have money, but no personal finance expert wants to admit their wealth is built on anything other than a solid foundation of hard work and self-control — not their degrees in finance, Ivy League educations, middle class upbringings… or their ability to sell you a fantasy.

The broader problem with budget culture is its emphasis on individual responsibility and insistence on ignoring the varying levels of access and privilege in our world. It vilifies and oppresses anyone who doesn’t live up to the ideal, regardless of their circumstances. And that ideal is, unsurprisingly, rooted in maleness and whiteness in the way ... See more

Budget culture makes money all about you — your actions, responsibilities and mindset. But individual actions can’t overcome persistent pay gaps, generational trauma, systemic oppression and algorithmic bias. No money management method can square rising housing costs with stagnant wages. No amount of self control can make up for the costs of “profe... See more

Budget culture keeps you striving to improve your own finances so you can improve everything money pays for in your life — you have to become rich to thrive in a world made for people who are rich. Fighting budget culture means remaking the world in a way that lets everyone experience the ease of being “rich,” regardless of the numbers in their ban... See more

In the same way diet culture is quick to blame health conditions on a person’s weight, or prescribe food restriction as treatment toward the goal of being thin, budget culture sees measures like credit scores and debt as signifiers of financial health, and prescribes spending restrictions as the first step toward wellness — defined, at its core, as... See more