<prompt> Human: It is especially helpful for free-spenders in the family to conceive a cause-and-effect relationship between work and money management. EDIT: Thanks to everyone for the kind comments. Im hoping to reply to comments as quickly as I can. Im happy to have helped some with my post. I wanted to add a suggestion for those who get paid on salarycommissionirregular income:Use your total take home pay for the previous month or the average take home pay from the previous quarter, and use this in your calculation as your take home pay. Create a column to calculate the percentage of your take home pay that that budget categoryexpense represents. It makes each category a piece of a pie that is your take home pay. Use this information to help decide if that piece is too big. If you see your fast foodclothingcar payment is too high of an overall percentage, you can make adjustments in your spending habits to better utilize your income and avoid upward spending trends in certain areas of your life. Assistant: I wanted to post this more for the people that want to budget but have someone in the household or maybe themselves that sees budgeting as a restriction to their spending, instead of seeing the budget as a tool to tell their money to go where they want it to go. This may help them better understand why a budget is important and that controllingdirecting spending is important as well.  <response>: I try to get people on board with tracking rather than budgeting first, both for money and calories. For most, seeing the results of their tracking is enough to get them to agree that budgeting is a good idea, but it also helps them to set a realistic budget. 