The Overspending Trap: How I Escaped a Life of Financial Debt by Thinking Like a Software Engineer

As a professional strategist, my world revolves around logic, foresight, and building robust plans.

For years, I prided myself on my ability to architect complex projects, anticipate risks, and guide teams toward successful outcomes.

Yet, behind this facade of competence, my personal financial life was a chaotic mess of credit card statements, mounting interest, and a quiet, persistent panic.

I was a financial imposter—calm and collected on the outside, but drowning on the inside.

The breaking point wasn’t a single, dramatic catastrophe.

It was a slow, grinding failure punctuated by a moment of humiliating clarity.

I had been meticulously saving for a down payment on a house, watching the balance in my savings account grow with a sense of pride.

Simultaneously, I was racking up an almost equivalent amount of high-interest credit card debt on a “once-in-a-lifetime” trip, lifestyle upgrades I felt I “deserved,” and the general creep of unconscious spending.¹

I told myself I was managing it.

Then, a minor emergency—a non-negotiable car repair—struck.

I discovered I had zero real liquidity.

The money in my savings account was untouchable without derailing my long-term goal, forcing me to take on

even more debt to solve a short-term problem.

That moment shattered the illusion that I was in control.

It proved that my approach—the standard advice to “make a budget” or “just try harder”—was a fundamentally flawed strategy.

I was stuck in a loop, and my willpower was no match for it.

This led me to a question that would change everything: What if overspending isn’t a failure of willpower, but a failure of the mental model we use to understand our finances? What if we’ve been trying to fix a complex software bug by just restarting the computer over and over again?

---

In a Nutshell: A New Framework for Financial Freedom

For those who want the core strategy upfront, here is the paradigm shift that changed my life:

• The Problem: Overspending isn’t just a bad habit; it’s a form of “Financial Technical Debt.” Like in software engineering, when we choose a quick, easy “fix” now (an impulse buy on a credit card), we create a hidden cost of rework later (interest payments, stress, and reduced future options). Our financial lives become a messy, fragile “codebase” that’s difficult to maintain and impossible to build upon.
• The Diagnosis: We accumulate this debt for deep psychological reasons—chasing emotional highs, seeking social approval, and believing purchases will transform us.² This personal struggle is amplified by a global economic system that has pushed household debt to staggering levels across the developed world.⁴
• The Solution: You don’t escape by “trying harder.” You escape by thinking like an engineer and “refactoring” your financial codebase. This is a systematic, four-step process:

1. Conduct a Code Audit: Get a brutally honest, complete picture of every dollar you owe, earn, and spend.
2. Prioritize the Bugs: Choose a debt repayment strategy—like the Debt Avalanche (tackling high-interest debt first) or the Debt Snowball (clearing small debts for momentum)—to systematically eliminate bugs in your code.
3. Design New Architecture: Implement a robust budget (like the 50/30/20 rule or a Zero-Based Budget) to prevent writing “bad code” in the future.
4. Automate Your System: Use automatic transfers for bills, savings, and debt payments to remove emotion and human error from the equation.

• The Goal: The ultimate aim is to move your life from “maintenance mode,” where all your resources go to fixing past mistakes, to “innovation mode,” where you have the freedom, money, and mental space to design the future you actually want.

---

Part 1: The Hidden Architecture of Overspending

Before you can fix a system, you have to understand how it works.

My journey out of debt began not with a budget, but with a diagnosis.

I had to understand the invisible forces—both internal and external—that were keeping me trapped.

The “Why” Behind the Buy: Deconstructing the Impulse

For me, overspending was a coping mechanism.

A stressful week at work would end with an expensive dinner out or a new gadget I didn’t need—a form of “retail therapy”.⁸

I saw friends taking lavish vacations and felt a pang of social pressure to keep up, a classic case of chasing the Joneses.²

I was using money to manage my emotions and construct an identity that my bank account couldn’t actually support.

Research confirms this experience is nearly universal.

The reasons we overspend are deeply psychological and often have little to do with the items we buy:

• We Buy Unrealistic Expectations: A study from the University of Missouri found that people prone to debt expect “unreasonable degrees of change in their lives from their purchases”.² We don’t just buy a mountain bike; we buy the fantasy of becoming a more adventurous person. We don’t just buy a new suit; we buy the confidence and success we believe it will bring.²
• We Buy Emotional Regulation: Spending can provide a “brief high” by triggering the release of dopamine and serotonin.² This makes it a powerful, albeit destructive, tool for managing feelings of depression, boredom, or low self-worth. It’s a short-term mood boost with long-term negative consequences.⁸
• We Buy Social Acceptance: The desire to belong is a fundamental human need. We often spend to signal success, gain approval from our peers, and avoid the feeling of “missing out,” a pressure that has been dramatically amplified by social media.²
• We Buy into an Illusion: The modern economy has psychologically distanced us from the act of payment. Swiping a credit card feels abstract, like you’re not spending “real” money.⁸ This illusion of cashless spending breaks the link between the pleasure of acquiring and the pain of paying, making it far easier to overspend than if we were handing over physical cash for every purchase.

You Are Not Alone: The Global Debt Machine

As I began to research the mechanics of debt, a startling realization dawned on me: my personal crisis was not personal at all.

It was a single data point in a massive, global trend.

This was both terrifying and strangely validating.

The problem wasn’t just me; it was a systemic condition affecting hundreds of millions of people in developed economies.

The scale of modern household debt is staggering.

• In the United States, total household debt has soared past $18 trillion. Credit card balances alone have eclipsed $1.21 trillion, and delinquency rates for credit cards and auto loans are steadily climbing, signaling widespread financial stress.⁴
• In the United Kingdom, the average total debt per household is over £65,000. For someone making only minimum payments on a credit card with an average interest rate, it could take more than 26 years to clear the balance.⁵
• Australia has one of the highest household debt-to-income ratios among developed nations, at a staggering 211%. The average household carries over A$261,000 in debt.¹⁰
• In New Zealand, household debt sits at approximately 167% of disposable income. For households with a mortgage, it’s not uncommon for nearly 18% of their income to be consumed by interest payments alone.⁷

This data paints a clear picture: living with high levels of debt has become the default state for a huge portion of the population in the English-speaking world.

Table 1: Comparative Household Debt Snapshot (2024)

Country	Average Total Household Debt (Local Currency)	Household Debt as % of Disposable Income	Average Credit Card Debt (per household/adult)
United States	~$18.04 trillion (Total)	~103.6% 10	~$1.21 trillion (Total) 4
United Kingdom	£65,479 5	~117.2% 11	£2,477 (per household) 5
Australia	A$261,492 10	~211% 10	A$3,344 (outstanding balance) 6
New Zealand	NZ$218,770 7	~167% 7	N/A (Included in consumer loans)

Sources:.⁴

Note: Figures are based on the latest available data as of 2024 and may vary slightly between sources.

The Great Contradiction: The Savings Paradox

The most confusing part of my financial picture was that I was saving money.

This contradiction lies at the heart of why conventional financial advice fails.

We are often taught to think about saving and spending as two separate activities.

The data reveals this psychological split on a massive scale.

While households are accumulating record levels of high-interest debt, their savings behaviors are wildly inconsistent, pointing to a deep financial disconnect.

• The U.S. personal savings rate is near historic lows, hovering between 3.8% and 4.6%.¹²
• The UK has recently seen a higher savings ratio of around 11%, yet a third of adults have less than £1,000 in savings, indicating the savings are concentrated among a few while many have no buffer.¹⁴
• Australia’s savings ratio has been volatile, swinging from pandemic highs to recent lows of 3.8%.¹⁶
• Most strikingly, New Zealand’s household savings rate has recently been negative, meaning that, on average, households are “dissaving”—spending more than their total disposable income, likely by taking on more debt or drawing down assets.¹⁸

This reveals the central flaw in the common financial mindset.

A person can feel virtuous for putting $100 into a savings account earning 5% interest while simultaneously ignoring the fact that they are paying 21% interest on their credit card balance.

They are compartmentalizing their financial life, failing to see that the two activities are working directly against each other, resulting in a net loss.

This paradox left me searching for a new model, a unified theory that could explain and resolve this contradiction.

Table 2: The Financial Disconnect: Debt vs. Savings (2024)

Country	Household Debt-to-Income Ratio	Household/Personal Savings Rate
United States	~103.6% 10	3.8% 12
United Kingdom	~117.2% 11	10.9% 21
Australia	~211% 10	3.8% 16
New Zealand	~167% 7	-2.4% (dissaving) 18

Sources:.⁷

Note: Ratios and rates are based on the latest available quarterly or annual data and methodologies may differ slightly by country.

Part 2: The Epiphany: Uncovering “Financial Technical Debt”

Mired in frustration, I stumbled upon an article about software development.

It mentioned a concept called “technical debt,” a term coined in 1992 by developer Ward Cunningham to explain to business executives why they needed to invest time in cleaning up existing code.²²

The metaphor hit me with the force of a revelation.

Cunningham explained that shipping code with known flaws to meet a deadline is like taking on a financial debt.

You get a short-term benefit (the product is released), but you accrue “interest” in the form of future rework that makes it harder and slower to add new features later.²³

My financial life wasn’t a moral failing; it was a poorly designed system riddled with what I started calling

“Financial Technical Debt.”

The Analogy Explained

This paradigm shift reframes the entire problem of overspending from a weakness of character to a flaw in system design.

• Financial Debt as Technical Debt: The core principle is that choosing a quick, easy “fix” now—an impulse buy, a vacation you can’t afford, paying for a convenience with a credit card—creates a hidden cost of rework later.²⁴ That “rework” is the interest payments, the stress, and the loss of future financial flexibility.
• “Bad Code” is Impulsive Spending: Every time you swipe a credit card for something that isn’t part of a deliberate financial plan, you are writing “quick and dirty” code into your life’s financial software. It works for a moment—you get the item—but it makes the entire system more complex, fragile, and difficult to manage.²⁶
• “Interest Payments” are the Hidden Costs: The “interest” on this debt goes far beyond the APR on your statement. It’s the ongoing “maintenance load” that drains your resources ²⁸:

• Mental Overhead: The constant, low-grade anxiety of juggling due dates, tracking balances, and worrying about making payments. This was the software engineer in the Reddit thread who was working 90+ hours a week across two jobs, his mind consumed by the debt he’d accumulated.²⁹
• Lost Opportunity: Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar that cannot be invested in assets that grow your wealth. This is the insidious time value of money working against you.²³
• Reduced Agility: High debt payments lock you in. They make it harder to leave a job you hate, to handle an unexpected emergency, or to seize a sudden opportunity.³⁰ Just as technical debt slows a company’s ability to innovate, financial debt cripples your ability to adapt and grow.³¹
• “Refactoring” is a Systematic Overhaul: Paying off debt isn’t just about throwing money at the problem. It’s about “refactoring” your entire financial codebase. This means rewriting the bad habits, faulty logic, and flawed systems so that the debt doesn’t re-emerge.²²

The Technical Debt Quadrant for Personal Finance

To make this paradigm a practical tool, I adapted software expert Martin Fowler’s influential “Technical Debt Quadrant” to personal finance.²⁴

This helps diagnose

how and why you’re accumulating debt.

1. Reckless & Deliberate: “I know I can’t afford this luxury vacation, but I’m putting it on the credit card anyway. I’ll figure it out later.” This is the most dangerous quadrant. You are knowingly writing bad code into your life for a short-term gain, creating a mess that is not strategic.²⁷
2. Prudent & Deliberate: “I am taking out a student loan for a medical degree.” This is “good” debt. You are making a conscious, strategic decision to take on a liability that is designed to increase your future assets and earning power. It’s a calculated investment.²⁴
3. Reckless & Inadvertent: “I don’t have a budget or track my spending. I just use my credit card until it’s declined.” This is debt born of ignorance. You lack the financial literacy to understand the consequences of your actions, so you inadvertently create a mountain of debt.⁸
4. Prudent & Inadvertent: “I had a solid financial plan, but then I lost my job, and I’m using credit cards to cover my living expenses.” This is debt that arises when the world changes and your existing system is no longer adequate. You made prudent choices based on what you knew, but now the code needs a significant update to handle the new reality.

This framework was liberating.

It allowed me to look at my own debt not with shame, but with the cool, analytical eye of an engineer.

I could see my past mistakes clearly categorized, and I could finally start building a plan to fix them.

Part 3: The Refactoring Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Rebuilding Your Financial Codebase

Armed with this new paradigm, I stopped trying to “be better” and started acting like an engineer.

I wasn’t fixing a moral failing; I was debugging a system.

This section outlines the exact, step-by-step “refactoring” plan that took me from chaos to control.

Step 1: The Code Audit (Know Exactly What You Owe)

No software developer would start refactoring a complex application without first understanding the entire codebase.

You cannot fix what you cannot see.

The first step is to make your invisible debt brutally visible.

This means creating a single master document—a spreadsheet or a notebook—and listing every single financial obligation you have.

For each one, you must record the creditor, the total outstanding balance, the annual percentage rate (APR), and the minimum monthly payment.³³

This includes credit cards, car loans, personal loans, student loans, and any other money you owe.

At the same time, you must track every dollar of income and every single expense for at least one full month to get an honest baseline of where your money is actually going.³⁶

This audit is often painful, but it is the non-negotiable foundation for everything that follows.

Step 2: Version Control & Bug Prioritization (Choosing Your Repayment Strategy)

Once the audit is complete, you have a list of “bugs” in your financial code.

Now you need a systematic strategy for fixing them.

In software development, this is like deciding which bugs to tackle first to improve the system’s stability.

In personal finance, there are two primary, proven “bug-fixing” algorithms.

• The Debt Avalanche (Fixing the Highest-Impact Bug First): This method is pure mathematical efficiency. You continue to make the minimum payments on all your debts, but you channel every extra dollar you can find toward the debt with the highest interest rate.³⁷ Once that debt is eliminated, you roll that entire payment amount (the minimum plus the extra) onto the debt with the next-highest interest rate. This approach saves you the most money in interest over time and gets you out of debt the fastest. It is the preferred method for the logically-minded person who is motivated by optimization.³³
• The Debt Snowball (Clearing Easy Bugs for Momentum): This method, famously popularized by financial personality Dave Ramsey, prioritizes psychological momentum over mathematical purity.³⁹ You make minimum payments on all debts, but you throw every extra dollar at the debt with the
  smallest balance, regardless of the interest rate.³⁷ When that small debt is wiped out, you get a quick, powerful win. This victory provides the motivation to keep going. You then roll its payment into the next-smallest debt, creating a “snowball” of increasing payments. This is the ideal method for anyone who feels overwhelmed and needs to see tangible progress to stay committed.³³

Step 3: Designing New Architecture (Building a Bulletproof Budget)

Clearing old debt is only half the battle.

If you don’t design a new, robust financial architecture, you will inevitably write the same “bad code” all over again.

A budget is that new architecture.

It’s not a straitjacket; it’s a blueprint for your spending that ensures your resources are allocated deliberately.

• The 50/30/20 Budget (The Standard Framework): This is an excellent starting architecture. You allocate 50% of your after-tax income to Needs (housing, utilities, groceries, transportation), 30% to Wants (dining out, entertainment, hobbies), and 20% to Savings and Debt Repayment (anything above the minimum payments).⁴⁰
• The Zero-Based Budget (The High-Integrity System): For those who want maximum precision, this architecture is ideal. The rule is simple: Income minus Expenses must equal zero.⁴³ This forces you to give every single dollar a specific job—whether that job is paying rent, buying groceries, going into savings, or paying down debt. There is no ambiguous “leftover” money, which dramatically reduces the chance of impulse spending.⁴²
• The Pay-Yourself-First Budget (The Failsafe Model): This architecture prioritizes the refactoring work above all else. Before you pay any other bill, the very first transaction you make each month is an automatic transfer to your savings and debt-reduction goals.⁴² You treat your future self as your most important creditor. The rest of your money is then used for your needs and wants.

Step 4: Continuous Integration/Deployment (Automating Your Success)

The most effective software teams automate everything they can to eliminate the risk of human error.

The single most powerful action you can take to ensure your new financial architecture works is to automate it.

Willpower is a finite resource that fails under stress.

A well-designed system runs on its own.

This means setting up a series of automatic bank transfers that execute without your daily intervention.⁴⁰

For example: your paycheck is deposited into a primary checking account.

On the same day, an automatic transfer sends money to a separate account used only for paying fixed bills.

Another automatic transfer sends your designated savings and investment amount to those accounts.

Your debt payments are scheduled to be paid automatically from your bill-paying account.

This removes temptation and decision fatigue from the equation.

The system does the work for you, ensuring your new, clean financial code is executed flawlessly every single month.

Conclusion: From Maintenance Mode to Innovation

My own journey of applying this engineering mindset was transformative.

Paying off the final credit card was, of course, a huge relief.

But the real success wasn’t just reaching a zero balance; it was the incredible feeling of freedom that came with it.

The “interest payments” I had been making weren’t just financial—they were mental and emotional.

The cognitive bandwidth I had been dedicating to worrying about debt was suddenly liberated.³⁰

This is the ultimate goal of escaping the overspending trap.

The point is not to live a life of miserable deprivation.

It is the exact opposite.

It is to move your life out of “maintenance mode”—a state where all your time, money, and energy are consumed by fixing problems from the past and just keeping things from breaking—and into “innovation mode.”

When you eliminate your financial technical debt, you reclaim your most valuable resources: your money, your time, and your peace of mind.

You can finally stop debugging the past and start designing the future you truly want to build.

Getting out of debt isn’t the finish line.

It is the clean slate, the solid foundation upon which you can finally begin to architect a life of true creative and personal freedom.

Works cited

1. When Overspending Leads to Debt, This Can Help | Consolidated Credit, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.consolidatedcredit.org/debt-stories/overspending-and-debt/
2. The Psychology of Overspending – Freedom Debt Relief, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.freedomdebtrelief.com/learn/personal-finance/psychology-overspending/
3. The link between money and mental health – Mind, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/money-and-mental-health/the-link-between-money-and-mental-health/
4. Household Debt and Credit 2024: Q4 – Federal Reserve Bank of …, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/interactives/householdcredit/data/pdf/HHDC_2024Q4
5. The Money Statistics March 2024 – The Money Charity, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://themoneycharity.org.uk/money-statistics/march-2024/
6. Australian Household Debt Statistics 2024 – Jacaranda Finance, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.jacarandafinance.com.au/general/average-household-debt-statistics/
7. Average New Zealand Household Debt Level – MoneyHub NZ, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.moneyhub.co.nz/average-nz-household-debt-levels.html
8. 10 reasons people overspend – Getsby, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://getsby.com/en/reasons-people-overspend/
9. March 2024 U.S. National Consumer Credit Trends Reports – Equifax, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.equifax.com/newsroom/all-news/-/story/march-2024-u-s-national-consumer-credit-trends-reports/
10. Australian household debt statistics: How much debt are we in?, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.finder.com.au/credit-cards/australias-personal-debt-reported-as-highest-in-the-world
11. Household debt: Economic indicators – The House of Commons Library – UK Parliament, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02885/
12. U.S. Personal Savings Rate | The DBD Group, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://dbdgroup.bairdwealth.com/resource-center/money/u-s-personal-savings-rate
13. Americans aren’t saving as much as they used to | USAFacts, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://usafacts.org/articles/why-arent-americans-saving-as-much-as-they-used-to/
14. Households’ finances and saving, UK – Office for National Statistics, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/articles/householdsfinancesandsavinguk/2020to2024
15. UK Savings Statistics 2024 – Saving Facts and Stats Report | money …, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.money.co.uk/savings-accounts/savings-statistics
16. How Much Does The Average Australian Save in 2025?, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.savings.com.au/savings-accounts/average-savings-australia
17. Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, March 2025, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/national-accounts/australian-national-accounts-national-income-expenditure-and-product/latest-release
18. National accounts (income, saving, assets, and liabilities): December 2024 quarter, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.stats.govt.nz/experimental/national-accounts-income-saving-assets-and-liabilities-december-2024-quarter/
19. National accounts (income, saving, assets, and liabilities): December 2024 quarter, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.publicnow.com/view/644DB426B3D7A8EACC8F086107920F4C3078BCDB?1743634042
20. New Zealand household income, savings rise in Q4 – Xinhua, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://english.news.cn/asiapacific/20250403/584c616b7c24473299579b90cbf5c8ff/c.html
21. tradingeconomics.com, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/personal-savings#:~:text=Household%20Saving%20Rate%20in%20the,the%20fourth%20quarter%20of%202024.
22. Technical Debt as a Metaphor – Medium, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://medium.com/@margaret_568/technical-debt-as-as-metaphor-d950eeab96df
23. Technical Debt: an Incomplete Metaphor? – RedMonk, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2017/08/08/technical-debt/
24. What is Technical Debt & How to Pay it Off, Examples [2025] – Asana, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://asana.com/resources/technical-debt
25. How to explain technical debt in plain English | The Enterprisers Project, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2020/6/technical-debt-explained-plain-english
26. Anyone else think people over emphasize technical debt? : r/ExperiencedDevs – Reddit, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1ik1skx/anyone_else_think_people_over_emphasize_technical/
27. What Is Technical Debt? | Definition and Examples – ProductPlan, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.productplan.com/glossary/technical-debt/
28. If you want to address tech debt, quantify it first – Stack Overflow, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/08/24/if-you-want-to-address-tech-debt-quantify-it-first/
29. I’ve Ruined my Life by Running Up Credit Card Debt/Overspending – Reddit, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/comments/1aplyeb/ive_ruined_my_life_by_running_up_credit_card/
30. A Conversation With Laurel Bailey Of Industrial Properties Of The South – Huntsville Business Journal, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://huntsvillebusinessjournal.com/news/2025/08/05/a-conversation-with-laurel-bailey-of-industrial-properties-of-the-south/
31. The Technical Debt explained with a kitchen analogy. – DEV Community, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://dev.to/samuelfaure/the-technical-debt-explained-with-a-kitchen-analogy-518h
32. Technical Debt – Martin Fowler, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html
33. A Guide to Getting Out of Debt – IC Credit Union, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.iccreditunion.org/insights-resources/getting-out-of-debt-guide/
34. How to Get Out of Debt – Experian, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/credit-education/how-to-get-out-of-debt/
35. How to pay down debt quickly in 5 simple steps | Earnest, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.earnest.com/blog/debt-reduction-strategy/
36. How to Pay Off Debt: 7 Strategies To Try – NerdWallet, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/pay-off-debt
37. Snowball vs. Avalanche Method for Paying Down Debt | Navy Federal Credit Union, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.navyfederal.org/makingcents/credit-debt/snowball-vs-avalanche-for-paying-down-debt.html
38. Debt Snowball or Debt Avalanche: Which Method Is Right for You? – Discover, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.discover.com/personal-loans/resources/consolidate-debt/payoff-debt-snowball-vs-avalanche/
39. The Technical Debt Snowball | Dan Goslen | Team-Driven Developer, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://dangoslen.me/blog/the-technical-debt-snowball/
40. How to Budget Money: A Step-By-Step Guide – NerdWallet, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-budget
41. Your guide to creating a budget plan – Better Money Habits – Bank of America, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://bettermoneyhabits.bankofamerica.com/en/saving-budgeting/creating-a-budget
42. 4 Budgeting Strategies: Which One is Right for You? – Citizens Bank, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.citizensbank.com/learning/budgeting-strategies.aspx
43. 5 Simple Budgeting Methods | LendingTree, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://www.lendingtree.com/student/simple-budget/
44. Popular Budgeting Strategies | Penn Student Registration & Financial Services – University of Pennsylvania, accessed on August 9, 2025, https://srfs.upenn.edu/financial-wellness/browse-topics/budgeting/popular-budgeting-strategies