The average budgeting technique would require you to download or buy a money planner, install a few apps, connect your bank accounts to different third-party systems, spend time daily, weekly, AND monthly planning, calculating, and moving money around, and in the end, it would make you feel guilty for a £4 latte you had three weeks ago.
I don’t have time for that. And if you don’t either, this post is for you.
And regardless of what the title says, you don’t have to be lazy to lose control of our money. You just need to be a normal person with a full-time job, a side hustle, a partner, a kid (or two, or three), and a few plans for the weekend to completely forget about your money planner and your pretty spreadsheets.
Many people just aren’t into budgeting. They have no patience for checking their bank accounts every day and would certainly lose their minds over the 33 different spending categories someone told them they need in their life.
For people like you and me, who are too busy to pay attention to everything all the time, I’ve selected the most basic and simplified budgeting methods to keep you feeling like you’re adulting just enough when it comes to your money without taking time away from your limited schedule. If you’re trying to simplify more than just your finances, you might also enjoy these lists to organize your life.
After years of working with people and their money (ex-banker here), I’ve learned that the time you spend budgeting has nothing to do with the result at the end of that budget session. Less is more because you can focus on what matters much easier.
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Basic Budgeting for People Who Just Don’t Want to Budget
The No-Budget Budget
This method requires less attention than your fish. You only need to do something once and then check if everything works as expected every few days. This strategy is good for people who are already fairly reasonable with their spending.
Here it is:
Step one: Automate bills (all of them).
Step two: Automate savings – pick an achievable amount to go straight into your savings account on your payday (create a direct debit through your mobile banking).
Step three: Don’t use credit cards for daily spending – you want every purchase you make to immediately affect your current balance so you always know how much you actually have to spend. However, if you’re used to paying with a credit card and you’re good at paying it in full every time, then you can skip this step.
Why does this work?
Because most people don’t overspend on purpose. They overspend because they have no idea how much they have left. When your bills are automated and your savings are already gone on payday, the money that’s left in your account is yours to spend without guilt. No calculations needed. No spreadsheet to update. You just look at your balance and you know.
The only thing you need to check every few days is that nothing unexpected has come out of your account. That’s it. Five seconds, once every few days. Even your goldfish requires more attention than that.
The Weekly Allowance System
This one feels like you’re exercising a bit of more control over your money and yourself, but if the previous system isn’t your vibe because you can’t trust yourself with the “reasonable spending” part, this one is perfect for you.
Step one: Open a separate account with a debit card.
Step two: Automate monthly bills and important payments.
Step three: Decide on amount of money you can comfortably spend every week (or biweekly or monthly, depending on how often is your payday), and every time you get paid, transfer that amount into the new account with a new debit card to use that money for spendings only. You don’t care what’s left on the main account and what happens there as long as everything gets paid.
The best part of this system is that you stop caring about what happens on the main account. You don’t need to know. You don’t need to check it. The bills are paid, the savings are taken care of, and you’ve got your weekly pot to play with. That’s the whole picture.
If you run out of your weekly allowance before the week is over, you wait. That’s the built-in discipline. No guilt, no spreadsheet, no conversation with yourself about whether the candle you bought was a “want” or a “need.” You just wait for the next transfer and move on.
A good starting amount is whatever you feel is realistic, not whatever a budgeting app tells you it should be. Be honest with yourself here. If you set it too low you will either cheat and transfer more anyway, or you’ll feel pushed, and won’t stick to anything.
The Lazy Zero Balance
Step one: Automate everything – bills and monthly payments.
Step two: Spend as you wish.
Step three: The day before payday, log into your account and transfer everything that’s left there into your savings account, so you can start from zero on the next day.
This one sounds almost too simple to work. And I understand the skepticism. But here’s the thing: it works because it uses a simple human trick: whatever is in front of you, you spend. Whatever isn’t there, you don’t miss.
When the day before payday comes and you sweep everything left into savings, you’re not sacrificing anything you were planning to use. You’re just sending leftovers somewhere useful before they disappear on something you won’t even remember in a week.
Over time, you’ll notice the leftovers growing. Some months it might be £10. Some months it might be £80. And slowly, without any planning at all, your savings account starts to look like something you actually built on purpose.
I have used this technique for years in the past, and as simple as it sounds, that’s how effective it is. If you forget to transfer your balance before payday arrives, just check how much you had initially in the account at the beginning of the day and move that money to your savings. You’re done.
Which one is for you?
Here’s how you know which one is for you:
The No-Budget Budgeting: If you are generally sensible with money but you don’t like thinking about it too much.
The Weekly Allowance System: If you like overspending and need clear limits regarding money.
The Lazy Zero Balance Method: If you want to save but sticking to a saving system isn’t your thing, you never know how much you’ll have left and seriously can’t be bothered about it too much.
And if you still aren’t sure which one to go for, pick the one that resonates with you and stick with it for a month only. if it’s your budgeting system, keep it and if it isn’t – try the next one or modify the one you already have tried.
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.