Do you remember that book that went viral several years ago called "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo? She was all about looking at each item and keeping the ones that sparked joy. Budgeting is the same, it's about looking at all your spending and keeping the things that spark joy. Behind the scenes it's about making a plan for your money so that you have the money ready and available when there are opportunities for joy.
YNAB has recently changed how they teach the method. They've been thinking about what makes budgeting with YNAB different from other budgeting methods. The core of that difference is that YNAB supports you spending your money. There's not a big push for anyone to cut back or keep expenses within specific guidelines. Instead it's just about spending mindfully. So the new word they've coined is "Spendfulness". I suspect that the root of this word's formation is mindfulness and spending, but personally I'm connecting it more with joyful spending. Hence my opening thoughts on things that spark joy.
So, how do we apply the tidying up magic to budgeting? Especially this time of year when everyone is feeling reflective and productive. With many clients I spend time walking though their list of categories and really evaluating each one. Sometimes it's just looking at the math and whether targets are set correctly, but this often sparks discussions about what categories are important and what categories are not.
For example, I have a category in my budget for my kid's classes and activities. I love being able to provide them with things that give them time with friends and help them grow as people. Even when the amount spent feels high the category brings us so much joy. On the other hand, I have a lawn and garden category that hardly ever gets any funding. I want to be the sort of person that plants gardens and takes care of our yard but if I'm honest with myself, it brings me very little joy to do those things so I often just don't.
Obviously, both in decluttering and in budgeting we can't just keep only the joy, because even though paying my electric bill doesn't bring me joy I do enjoy having lights and functional electronics. This reality is never more clear than in the winter when we experience frequent outages. So even the expenses that don't actually feel like they spark true joy I try to be grateful for and notice the reason for the spending. If I can't find a reason to appreciate the expense it's time to see if we can do without it somehow.
Some expenses exist to support other expenses. If I'm decluttering and I love to read and have stacks and stacks of books that I'm keeping I probably shouldn't get rid of all my bookshelves even if I don't love them. In my budget I want to keep all those classes and activities for the kids so I also need to keep my gas budget and car repairs funded as well.
I encourage you to spend some time looking through your budget categories and discovering their joy. Some of them might just be joyful all on their own. Other categories you are happy to have because they support other joy in some way (like gas money for kids activities or the electric bill for lights and whatnot). You might come across categories that don't support joy and you can begin to explore what you need to do to get rid of them. Once all that exploring and reflection has happened you'll be ready to create a spending plan that helps you live a joyful life.