I tried 'Kakeibo': The Japanese art of saving money

First off, please don't take anything I'm saying out of context which is in terms of regular people that make enough to pay their bills. Lower income types struggle with these things so I wholly recognize they're in a different type of game.

However, this whole article sounds like some pretentious westerner who thinks because they opened their mind to some sort of zen meditation that their problem became easier to solve. Also this same person chants the praises of writing things down and decrys the usage of software because you can't meditate while typing in stuff. It's literally no different than writing something in your checkbook.

When you have multiple accounts at different financials, have a 401k, and other assets, paper management gets complicated and time consuming incredibly fast, especially if you entered something in wrong. Can you imagine adjusting a ledger for a whole year because you transposed a number? Sure reconciling the difference can fix it, but it's sloppy and isn't right. Software takes all the hard work out of it and turns it into very simply data entry. You can also back it up too.

Budgeting is a problem with the individual. People who inflate their worth with the things they have tend to blow their money away on the latest and greatest or on literally anything they want as soon as they can get it. These people don't adhere to those stupid questions this meditative system says your supposed to adhere to. These people don't associate spending money as a bad thing. It is an instinctive behavioral pattern and not something taught. How many people actually know how to read over loan docs and understand proper debt management? A lot of people know "Pay your bill" which, yes, is very easy. But how many people actually factor in their interest in the cost of the thing they buy? People ignore the incremental costs, and forget the total cost in the end.

Remember that the reason a large majority of the economy works is because of suckers like this. Impulsive people would rather buy something at a quoted low price than risk never having that sale again. They don't look for trends or remember the costs of things down the road. They also don't factor future costs for things they need like car repairs (which is why lots of people max their loan amount for a vehicle, only to end up not being able to repair it when a serious issue occurs).

Honestly in my life, I've just become incredibly apathetic to other peoples financial situation. The few people that actually do know a solid means of budgeting truly know the value of the dollar and time. They aren't perfect, but they learn from their mistakes. They forgo spending $5 on a cup of starbucks and instead opt for $5 of a can of folgers. Instead of Rolex, they get a Seiko. If they see a 50% off sale, they consider the final price, not the fact that it happens to be 50% off. Also impulse buying is a big one. Being able to deny yourself something long term is one I rarely ever see among people without money.