If there is one thing that the personal-finance TV shows and the magazine articles agree on, it has to be this - that if you're serious about managing your finances well, you had better draw up a budget and stick to it as closely as possible. And an admonition to draw a budget is hard to disagree with too. It helps you set financial goals, save, get rid of debt and so on. The problem is that while budgets can be very good if you follow them, the truth is that most people find it very hard to follow budgets because they're just unpleasant things. Asking a person to follow a budget is like telling a smoker that he just has to try hard to quit. When the message you recommend is very unpleasant, people just don't follow them.
