The Case Against Budget Culture

With everything — but money in particular — our culture trains us to believe we never have what we need, and there’s not enough to go around. Our culture’s focus on individuality and individual responsibility makes it hard to be generous and easy to ignore someone else’s need.

Restriction is unsustainable personally, and culturally, normalizing this approach causes us to judge others and shame ourselves for not living up to an impossible standard.

In the book, I quote Amanda Montell, who explains this perfectly in Cultish : “Modern cultish groups feel comforting in part because they help alleviate the anxious mayhem of living in a world that presents almost too many possibilities for who to be.”

Budget culture steps into this environment, defines a “right” set of goals, creates a set of rules, and tells you you can reach those goals if you follow those rules. Just like the promises of fad diets, the latest relationship advice, or the one bad company you can avoid to stop from destroying the planet, there’s an enormous appeal to finding the... See more

I have my theories about how American understandings of work and the fetishism of restraint intersect with this thinking, but I’d love to hear you unpack it more. Where does the veneration of budgeting come from? What’s the value in de-naturalizing it?