Good news for budget-haters. Turns out frequently tweaking your spending plan may be less effective than doing so once a year.

This NYT story takes a look at new research from a University of Southern California professor who found that people budgeting for the long term are less confident of their spending needs and more likely to pad their budgets than short-term budgeters who regularly spend more than they estimate.

I haven’t found a link to the study to post here, but if I do, I’ll be sure to share it.

Just the other day, Matt was clearing off our computer’s desktop and asked if he should uninstall Quicken. I said yes.

After trying for months to use the software, spending my precious time inputting data and approving transactions, we let it go.

Then we tried Mint, a free, web-based, stripped down version of financial tracker. But that had all sorts of glitches, frequently making laughable category errors– like the time it labeled the Town Hall Brewery “home,” as in housing-related expense. I like my beer, but I certainly don’t live at the bar.

So for months now, we’ve had no budget, proving my theory that if you save automatically for retirement, emergencies, and fun, keep your expenses fairly low, and don’t go hog wild every week, you can live within your means and meet your goals without spending hours categorizing expenditures and poring over spreadsheets.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 2:36 pm and is filed under budgeting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.