This particularly enrages me!

I have a degree in math. I understand economics. "Budgeting" is worthless for most people except for a few people with pathological spending issues. Budgeting won't make money appear.

Most of my life, I've earned somewhat more than I spent, and I never budgeted. When I was broke, I bought almost nothing, but I still couldn't "budget" because I had no money to budget with.

The one thing I have consistently done is buy in bulk. I remember the first time I realized I was going to run out of money the next month (I suppose that's "budgeting"), and I went out and bought bulk noodles and bulk peanut butter. I did lose a few pounds but I made it.