You needn’t do a utility rebalancing to get value out of a budget. My primary use of a budget is to prevent surprises. I know my inflow; I know my outflow; I know how long it will take me to save up for $ item or recover from a $ hit to my savings. When I first started doing my budget, there was no explicit utilons->dollar comparison. That came automatically in the form of “holy crap, I spent how much on games this month? I thought I spent almost nothing,” or “wow, I spent way less on food than I expected this month.”
Note that online banking can make this initial phase really easy. All my expenses are in check or debit form (and cash withdrawals are rare), so all of my expenses show up on my online statement. It takes about 3 minutes in excel to have the month’s budget broken down and ready to compare with the prior month. With this low of an upfront cost, you can do the initial phase, then you’ll have more data if a more intensive revue is worth it for you.
You needn’t do a utility rebalancing to get value out of a budget. My primary use of a budget is to prevent surprises. I know my inflow; I know my outflow; I know how long it will take me to save up for $ item or recover from a $ hit to my savings. When I first started doing my budget, there was no explicit utilons->dollar comparison. That came automatically in the form of “holy crap, I spent how much on games this month? I thought I spent almost nothing,” or “wow, I spent way less on food than I expected this month.”
Note that online banking can make this initial phase really easy. All my expenses are in check or debit form (and cash withdrawals are rare), so all of my expenses show up on my online statement. It takes about 3 minutes in excel to have the month’s budget broken down and ready to compare with the prior month. With this low of an upfront cost, you can do the initial phase, then you’ll have more data if a more intensive revue is worth it for you.