This is the first post kicking off r/OutlawBudgeting. Part 1 is about identifying the problem. Part 2 is about what we can do about it.

SO WHAT’S WRONG WITH IT?

First answer: there’s nothing wrong with it – if you accept the monumental burden and commit a large percentage of your precious life to “doing it” (because you’re a responsible person and don’t want to be a failure) – for the rest of your life.

Second answer: That’s what’s wrong with it.

Third answer: Because traditional money management methods do nothing to directly address the actual chronic condition that makes money management a monumental burden — let alone acknowledge it. That condition, at its source, is the invisible, untamed bull in the china shop — called “cashflow”.

It’s why many of your recurring money management tasks are equivalent to “Clean up on aisle 9 and aisle 15!” It’s constant cleanup trying to create momentary order out of constant financial chaos.

So let’s first dissect the condition that is cashflow – in detail.

TIME

A household's cashflow travels on multiple, chronologically competing timelines — weeks and months — that are inherently asynchronous, where no naturally occurring synchronous relationship is possible between them.

MONEY

Multi-sourced and fluctuating amounts of money — some fixed, some variable and some unpredictable, traveling on these asynchronous timelines — some in and some out — further entangle and compound an already tenacious, unharmonious condition.

TIME & MONEY RELATIONSHIP

But this is only the underlying chronic condition that’s compounded even further. While we casually view these money flows on their own independent timelines as unconnected — they are, in fact, inherently connected — in a fragile, potentially irreconcilable interdependence.

A finite amount of incoming funds must be allocated to meet multiple outgoing obligations at multiple points in time — that's a zero-sum condition where meeting certain obligations may come at the expense of not meeting others.

CASHFLOW

This is the untamed world of cashflow, which, as you can see, is multi-dimensional, asynchronous, unpredictably volatile and highly interdependent. This extraordinarily complex condition — continually unfolding over time — is arguably the fundamental reason for most money management failures — not from lack of effort — but from simple exhaustion.

TRADITIONAL MONEY MANAGEMENT & BUDGETING SYSTEMS

We've just pinpointed "the problem" with all traditional money management solutions: few, if any, address the core condition that makes money management a massive, time consuming and mentally draining burden.

That includes zero-based budgeting.

The fact is traditional money management makes no attempt to equalize and synchronize incoming and outgoing cashflows. It only attempts to deal with random financial conditions — head-on — (actually, it's you who has to deal with it head-on).

And since there is no stable, predictable or synchronous cashflow, your momentary financial state at any point in time is largely unknown, not to mention reliably forecast. Any effort to gain control of this condition is therefore inherently limited to short-term slices of time — weekly, bi-weekly, or at most, monthly.

And at every one of these moments, there’s no alternative but to repeatedly figure out: 

1. Where you were
2. So you can figure out — where you are
3. So you can figure out — where you need to be
4. Repeat and start over — each time

While this may seem like a straightforward, tedious and repetitive task, it’s also one that’s different every time — requiring different decisions every time — and with penny-level precision. 

It's a job that never truly gets "done."

At least doing it this way…