You Don’t Need a Budget: Stop Worrying about Debt, Spend Without Shame, and Manage Money with Ease

Free yourself from the tyranny of toxic budget culture, and build an ethical, stress-free financial life.

Track every dollar you spend. Check your account balances once a week. Always pay off your credit card bill in full. Make a budget--and stick to it. These are just a few of the edicts you’ll find in virtually every personal finance book. But this kind of rigid, one-size-fits-all advice--usually written for and by wealthy white men (and a few women) with little perspective on the money struggles that many people face--is unrealistic, and only creates stress and shame.

As a financial journalist and educator, Dana Miranda is on a mission to liberate readers from budget culture: the damaging set of beliefs around money that rely on restriction, shame, and greed--much like diet culture does for food and bodies. In this long-overdue alternative to traditional budgeting advice, Miranda offers a new approach that makes money easy for everyone, regardless of the numbers in their bank account.

Full of counterintuitive advice--like how to use debt to support your life goals, how to plan for retirement without a 401K, and how to take advantage of resources that exist to support those left behind by the forces of capitalism--You Don’t Need a Budget will empower readers to get money off their mind and live the lives they want.

Dana Miranda is a Certified Educator in Personal Finance(R) (CEPF(R)) and a personal finance journalist. After leaving a leadership position with a popular financial media startup and spending two years as a freelance writer, she created Healthy Rich to change the way we talk about money. Dana has shared her expertise as a contributor to Forbes, Business Insider, the New York Times, CNBC, NextAdvisor, Culture Study, The Motley Fool, Money magazine, The Penny Hoarder, and Inc. magazine; and Healthy Rich has been featured in publications including Bankrate, Real Simple, and Forbes, where it was named a safe resource for LGBTQ+ financial education in 2022.