[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

You focus on banking, I’m talking about budgets. Do you track every cent in and out and have a quarterly updated forecast of your financial position a decade out? How close are you to that? If your answer doesn’t include a spreadsheet of some sort you’re not budgeting but taking a shortcut on faith your intuitions are correct.

Did you get taught how credit applications work, how banks determine credit worthiness, how to depreciate an asset, how to calculate lifetime cost of a vehicle, how to draft a bill of materials for a project? All things everyone should be able to do. It’s the lack of these skills and the cost of living crisis that creates ripe markets of ignorant people to exploit for profit through their financial mistakes.

Your school offers home ec? Mine dropped it forever ago. Only the trade school kids learned anything more hands on AP chem.

Cars are more reliable sure, but less maintainable in a home garage. I didn’t bring them up because the best argument I have for cars is repealing cafe and taxing cars annually with a multiplier for wheelbase squared x miles.

[SoftTalker]

No I don't budget to that degree. Neither did most people 30 years ago.

I put a percentage of my income into an investment account automatically every payday and forget about it. What I have left is my spending money. That's very simple and tends to work for me.

[Gigachad]

My bank app does that stuff automatically. They have identified and classified pretty much all merchants so the app can breakdown spending and tell you exactly how much you spend on essentials, restaurants, alcohol, etc.

You get the same info as your spreadsheet, but without any work.

[mbesto]

Exactly. If you are taught to balance a checkbook, it inherently forces you to budget.