Finance
This personal finance educator says budgeting is ‘toxic’ — try ‘intuitive’ spending instead
Girl holding shopping bags and walking down the street
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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.”
Dana Miranda, a certified personal finance educator, is the author of “You Don’t Need a Budget,” a book that looks to liberate readers from the prevailing approach of managing their money.
“Budget culture is our dominant approach to money that relies on restriction, shame, and greed,” Miranda told CNBC Make It in an interview, likening it to diet culture.
“Research shows in budgeting, and we see the same thing with a much broader body of research in dieting, that that kind of restriction doesn’t work,” she said.
“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.”
Not everyone agrees, and many financial planners say creating a budget is the single best thing you can do to improve your finances.
However, Miranda cited a 2018 study by researchers at the University of Minnesota who found little evidence that budgeting helps achieve long-term financial goals, adding that it can also increase anxiety.
Sheida Isabel Elmi, meanwhile, a research program manager at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, told CNBC Select 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.
Try ‘intuitive’ spending instead
According to Miranda, the toxicity of budgeting stems from a capitalistic culture geared toward making more money and accumulating assets, rather than focusing on the quality of life of individuals.
Instead of scrimping and saving your money, Miranda recommended “conscious spending,” as an alternative. “It’s like an intuitive or mindful approach to spending and using their money.”
“So instead of making a plan for your money on where every dollar is going to go and trying to stick to that and punishing yourself when you don’t, rewarding yourself when you do, take it more mindfully, moment by moment,” she said.
“So how does money serve you in this moment? How can money serve you in a broader way outside of the numbers and spreadsheets that we tend to put it in?”
Miranda acknowledged that it’s not easy to adopt this mindset, but said people need to start trusting themselves more.
When asked about the risk of overspending, Miranda said it’s okay to take on credit card debt. Although controversial, she said carrying debt isn’t always “ethically wrong” or as “destructive” as society would have you believe.
“I consider those as part of the resources available to you to spend,” she says. “As long as we understand how our debt products work and the consequences of different decisions that we make around debt.”
Not paying off your credit card every month can be costly, however, leading to additional debt, an increase in repayments, and damage to your credit score, CNBC Select reports.
Go on a ‘money date’
Another way to avoid reckless spending is to take yourself out on a “money date” every fortnight, Miranda said.
“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.
On the money date, you can check how your spending is affecting different areas of your life, and prioritize what’s important.
“So if I take this vacation that my friends are planning, how does that impact the money that I’m putting toward retirement savings next month? Or how does that impact what I’m spending in other areas? How does that impact how much I’m going to use on my credit card?” Miranda said.
You can also create a “money map” which helps organize your goals, the resources you have access to, and your financial commitments, she added — and this should be flexible.
For example, if you initially planned for 10% of your money to go into retirement savings every month, but then you realize you’d rather spend that money now, you can do that with a money map.
“You can sort of move it as it makes sense for you, but it helps you to see your financial situation so that you can understand the consequences of decisions you make,” she said.
“You can make sure that you always have this understanding of the lay of the land in your financial situation, so that it’s easier to make those conscious spending decisions as you go about your day-to-day.”
It’s important to note that budgeting is a standard financial planning method recommended by experts, however. Tania Brown, a CFP and former coach at SaverLife, a nonprofit focused on helping low-income Americans save, previously told CNBC Make It that budgeting is important regardless of income.
“A budget tells your money where to go and what to do so that you can have the life you want,” Brown said. “The less money you have then the more critical it is you prioritize where that money goes.”
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Aerodrome Finance, a leading decentralized exchange on Coinbase’s Base network with $400 million in total value locked, was targeted in a front-end attack late Friday, prompting urgent warnings for users to avoid its primary domains.
The incident appears to be a DNS hijacking of Aerodrome’s centralized domains, which allowed attackers to reroute users to lookalike phishing sites designed to trick them into signing malicious wallet transactions to separate them from their funds. Users are advised to instead rely on Aerodrome’s decentralized domains. Aerodrome has asked My.box, the domain provider, to contact them over a potential exploit of their systems.
These attacks do not compromise the underlying smart contracts, which manage user funds and protocol logic on-chain. At the time of writing, it’s unconfirmed whether the attack has led to any losses or how many users have been affected. Liquidity pools and protocol treasuries remain intact, according to Aerodrome.
Aerodrome’s team has been posting real-time updates on X, urging users not to access the compromised domains, aerodrome.finance and aerodrome.box, and instead use decentralized ENS mirrors like aero.drome.eth.limo. To reduce risk, the team recommends revoking recent token approvals using tools like Revoke.cash and avoiding signing any transactions from unverified domains.
New attack
Aerodrome has experienced similar front-end attacks before, including two in late 2023 that resulted in approximately $300,000 in user losses.
This latest attack comes just days after Aerodrome announced a merger with Velodrome, consolidating liquidity across Base and Optimism under the new “Aero” ecosystem. Despite the disruption, the AERO token price remained stable at around $0.67, up 2% over the last 24 hours.
The investigation is ongoing.
Financial behaviour specialist Emma Edwards, founder of The Broke Generation, is sharing her radical personal finance experiment: a whole year without buying a single item of clothing.
No new outfits, no second-hand finds, not even rentals. What began as a no-buy challenge soon became a powerful lesson in self-worth, resilience, and the surprising freedom of living with less.
In the exclusive extract below, Emma shares the six buying patterns we get trapped into thinking we actually need.
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The impact of our consumption habits creates an environment where we’re cornered from every angle. We have a collection of clothes that don’t work together, don’t make us feel good and don’t allow us to express ourselves the way we want to, which leaves us looking externally for what we’re not getting. The problem is, when we look externally, we buy more and more of the same.
Unravelling that idea of what can happen when we’re in a ‘yes’ state, a state of openness to consumption even though our intentions might suggest otherwise, got me curious about some of the unhelpful buying cycles I’d been stuck in. I really leaned into understanding how I ended up with the wardrobe I currently had, and what I could learn from the mistakes I made over and over again.
I realised that if I could establish the mistakes I was making and the ways I was buying the wrong things, I’d stop feeling compelled to buy more and more over time. Here are some of the patterns I uncovered in my wardrobe, and that I’ve seen in others’ too.
Once I liked something in one colour (often black), I’d giddily run out and buy it in another colour, thinking I was making some kind of ultra-smart decision and capitalising on what I loved. I’m going to give you a piece of advice now that I hope you’ll remember for many years. If you ever utter the words ‘I’m going to go and get this in another colour’ – run. It’s a trap. You probably won’t like the other colour, and it’ll just sit in your wardrobe and collect dust.
There are certain things in my wardrobe that I struggled to wear confidently outside of one specific outfit silo. Usually, this is a sure-fire sign that I’d bought it in a very specific context, like copying or replicating an outfit I’d seen someone else wear.
Today’s guest column is by Joseph Glatt, co-chair of the global Private Credit Group at Paul, Weiss.
The business of sports has evolved into one of the most sophisticated capital markets in the world. Franchises that once relied on wealthy patrons now operate as global enterprises with complex balance sheets, diversified revenue streams and brand portfolios that span continents. Behind the scenes, a quiet transformation is taking place. Private credit has become the financing engine powering the next phase of the industry’s growth.
For decades, the financial architecture of sports was narrow. Teams depended on a mix of owner equity, bank loans and broadcast advances. That model worked when sports was seasonal, media rights were centralized, and stadiums were used a few dozen times a year.
Today the business is more complicated. Digital engagement has replaced ticket sales as the primary growth driver, broadcast rights are fragmented across platforms, and venues have become year-round entertainment ecosystems. Private credit brings structure, speed and sophistication to a business that is increasingly complex and ever-evolving.
The appeal is obvious. Sports franchises have matured from passion assets into performance assets. Media rights, sponsorships, premium seating, licensing and real estate all provide recurring cash flows—a profile that looks less like entertainment and more like infrastructure. For credit investors searching for yield with tangible downside protection, it’s a natural fit.
What distinguishes the current wave of sports lending is its focus on assets. Lenders are financing discrete pieces of the ecosystem rather than entire teams—broadcast receivables, naming rights, arena redevelopment or ancillary real estate. A stadium backed by long-term contracts and naming agreements can support senior debt that behaves much like project finance. The economics are stable, the security is visible, and the exposure is detached from game outcomes. It’s a structural rather than sentimental approach to sports finance.
This shift has attracted institutional capital on a scale that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Pension funds, insurers and global asset managers now view sports as a legitimate component of their private credit portfolios. The logic is straightforward. The sector offers infrastructure-like cash flows with entertainment-driven growth. European football clubs have refinanced legacy debt with private credit facilities. North American franchises have used direct lending to fund media rights and working-capital needs. Even emerging leagues and women’s sports organizations are turning to private lenders to build facilities and extend reach. The flow of capital is both a cause and a consequence of the sector’s institutionalization.
The sophistication of these transactions reflects a growing recognition that sports carries unique risks. Revenues can fluctuate with team performance or media cycles, and valuations can move with public sentiment.
The best lenders manage this through structure rather than pricing. Deals often include covenants tied to attendance, sponsorship renewals or season-ticket deposits. Some of them link pricing to revenue performance or secure cross-collateralization between real estate and media income. The emphasis is on aligning capital with the rhythm of the underlying business, not imposing a one-size-fits-all template.
The opportunity extends beyond the professional leagues that dominate headlines. Collegiate athletics, youth sports and ancillary service providers are entering a commercial era of their own.
The legalization of name, image and likeness rights has turned college programs into fully commercial enterprises that now require working capital, facilities financing and sponsorship advances. Private lenders can design structures suited to that environment—secured against receivables, ticket income or local partnerships—where traditional financing models fall short.
Youth and amateur sports tell a similar story. The sector generates tens of billions of dollars in annual spending, yet capital formation remains fragmented. Financing of complexes, tournaments and training facilities have become scalable credit opportunities, driven by durable demand rather than speculation.
Real estate has also become inseparable from the business of sports. Stadiums are now anchors of mixed-use developments that include hotels, retail and housing. Teams are monetizing their brands across hospitality, content and data ventures. That convergence between physical and intangible assets creates a dual source of collateral. A stadium’s concrete and steel can be valued like infrastructure, while its media contracts and licensing revenue resemble corporate cash flows. Private credit thrives in precisely this intersection, where structure can integrate both sides of the balance sheet.
This new market is maturing quickly. The challenge now is discipline. Not every team or league deserves institutional credit. The fundamentals must be right: diversified revenue, credible governance and transparent capital structures. The most capable lenders operate more like strategic partners than passive financiers. They help management teams optimize balance sheets, monetize non-core assets and think creatively about liquidity. The value in these relationships lies in partnership, not just pricing.
Looking ahead, the next decade of sports capital will likely involve consolidation and securitization. Portfolios of sports-backed loans may be packaged into rated vehicles, widening access to institutional investors. Cross-border ownership will further globalize the ecosystem, blending European clubs, American franchises and Middle Eastern sovereign funds into a single capital network. That will require not just financial innovation but also regulatory fluency and geopolitical awareness.
Private credit’s entry into sports is not a passing trend. It marks a structural evolution in how capital supports one of the world’s most powerful industries. Sports is now a platform business, and platform businesses demand flexible, sophisticated financing.
The investors leading this transformation think not in seasons but in cycles. They understand that the scoreboard measures only part of the game. The real competition is for capital efficiency, and those who master it will define the future of sports finance.
Glatt has over 25 years of experience in private practice and in-house at one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers, with a particular focus on complex transactions, strategic product innovation and capital raising for asset management firms and financial institutions.
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