Let me tell you the number. The one you're avoiding.
Not because I want to shame you. But because nobody ever taught you to look at it without flinching — and that avoidance is costing you, every single day, compounding silently in the background of your life.
Money is the subject everyone talks around. Parents give vague warnings. Schools skip it entirely. Friends pretend they have it figured out. And you end up in your twenties — or your thirties — staring at a bank statement that doesn't make sense, wondering how you got here.
You got here because nobody built you a map.
Budgeting isn't about restriction. That's the first lie we need to address. Restriction is what happens when you don't budget — when money makes decisions instead of you. A budget is a decision. Maybe the most important one you make every month.
Here's what it actually looks like. Not the version from personal finance Twitter, not the version your bank wants you to believe. The version that works when you're starting from zero, when your income is irregular, when you're just trying to understand where it all goes.
We start with the number. Your number.
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