Finance

This personal finance educator says budgeting is ‘toxic’ — try ‘intuitive’ spending instead

Published

2 years ago

November 27, 2024

Press Room

This personal finance educator says budgeting is ‘toxic’ — try ‘intuitive’ spending instead

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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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Finance

LUMIQ Raises Strategic Funding to Become the AI Decision Layer for Financial Services

Published

2 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Press Room

LUMIQ Raises Strategic Funding to Become the AI Decision Layer for Financial Services

While most AI in financial services remains advisory, LUMIQ has built the layer that owns the decision — autonomous, auditable AI agents making regulated calls in production at leading banks, insurers, and capital markets firms. Today, LUMIQ serves clients across India, the United States, and Southeast Asia — leading institutions across insurance, banking, and capital markets.

NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.

LUMIQ raises Strategic Funding to become AI decision layer for financial services

Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most.
Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ

From AI that assists to AI that decides

For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.

The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.

LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ

This round funds four priorities: expanding go-to-market in the US and Southeast Asia; deepening LiteCone’s decisioning capabilities; extending the agent workforce across more financial-services roles; and building a partnership ecosystem with cloud hyperscalers, AI labs, and core banking and insurance platforms so LiteCone is embedded where institutions already run.

LUMIQ’s investors backed the round for the same reason its customers adopt LiteCone: agents already deciding in production, with auditability and control built in.

As a financial-services group, we know how much rests on getting regulated decisions right, at speed and at scale. LUMIQ has built AI agents that decide in production with auditability and control built in, the capability the industry has been moving toward. We are proud to lead this round and to support the team’s expansion across the US and Southeast Asia.
Lakshmi Iyer, Group President – Investments & CEO, Bajaj Alternates

Our conviction is grounded in what LUMIQ has already built. Their AI agents aren’t just built for the future. They are operating in production today, at speed. This combination is rare, and its value will only compound as the company scales globally.
Girish Jhunjhunwala, Fund Manager – PE and VC Investments, Bajaj Alternates

Financial services is one of the hardest categories to crack — regulated, risk-averse, and unforgiving of hype. LUMIQ has put agentic AI into live financial-services workflows and earned the trust of large institutions across the US, Southeast Asia and India. That is how a category-defining company in financial-services AI gets built, and we are proud to keep backing the team as they scale globally.
Kitty Agarwal, Partner, Info Edge Ventures

LUMIQ’s goal is to lead one category: auto-decisioning at production scale for financial services. Agents that act, not assist, and never compromise audit, compliance, or predictability.

About LUMIQ
LUMIQ is an AI-native financial services company. Through its LiteCone platform and a growing workforce of production AI agents, LUMIQ turns real financial-services roles — insurance underwriter, credit underwriter, claims adjudicator — into agents that are consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable. The company pairs deep domain expertise across banking, insurance, and capital markets with frontier AI. LUMIQ employs over 350 AI and data specialists, and has offices in New Jersey, Singapore, and Delhi NCR (India).

Web: www.lumiq.ai

Cision

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/lumiq-raises-strategic-funding-to-become-the-ai-decision-layer-for-financial-services-302805280.html

Finance

Consumer confidence plunges among younger adults

Published

12 hours ago

June 18, 2026

Press Room

Consumer confidence plunges among younger adults

Consumer confidence has plunged among traditionally optimistic younger adults amid fears for their personal finances and the wider economy, figures show.

GfK’s long-running Consumer Confidence Index remained unchanged at an overall score of minus 23 in June.

However, the analyst said this was was “misleading as, beneath the surface, there are new signs that confidence is weakening”.

Source: GfK

Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK, said: “The biggest fall this month is among those aged 16 to 29, traditionally one of the most optimistic groups.

“Here confidence has dropped 11 points over the past month to minus two, the lowest level seen for two years, driven by large falls in views on both their own personal finances and the wider economy.

“More broadly, there are now no demographic groups with a positive confidence score, including higher-income households earning £50,000 or more, who have slipped back into negative territory as of June.

“Confidence remains subdued and vulnerable to further economic or political uncertainty.”

Overall, confidence in personal finances over the coming year remained flat at minus two, four points lower than this time last year.

The measures of both personal finances and the economy over the previous 12 months were both slightly down, by two points and three points respectively, “reflecting the sense that things have been extremely tough over the last year for so many”, GfK said.

The only measure to increase was expectations for the wider economy over the next 12 months, up two points to minus 36 but still eight points below this time last year.

The major purchase index, an indicator of confidence in buying big ticket items, remained at minus 20, four points lower than June last year.

Finance

How US-Iran peace deal will affect our cost of living

Published

22 hours ago

June 18, 2026

Press Room

How US-Iran peace deal will affect our cost of living

“Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” said Donald Trump on social media after he announced the signing of an interim peace deal with Iran on Sunday. Under the agreement – which Iran acknowledged included a 60-day negotiating period for a final deal – the president said that following retrieval of mines, there would be a “toll free opening” of the Strait of Hormuz.

But many of the finer details remain “unclear”, said The Guardian. There are questions over the “exact timing of the reopening of the maritime route, who will oversee safe passage and whether any conditions will be applied”.