If you're trying to stay on top of your spending, you might have logged your finances in a spreadsheet, tracked every dollar, and created a strict spending plan, but one expert says budgeting like this can be "toxic."
"People tend to fail at sticking to those rules, and so you are inevitably going to feel like a failure. You're going to feel that shame because you're not reaching those sorts of arbitrary goals that are being set."that budgeting can be especially challenging for low and middle-income families. This is because they're more likely to have volatile incomes and lower wages which can't be easily managed by a strict, prescriptive budget.
Miranda acknowledged that it's not easy to adopt this mindset, but said people need to start trusting themselves more. "It's a way of automating your money management so that you don't just constantly have this ticker of money stress running through your head," she explained.