Well that's a strawman. I've seen churches, corporations, and families being run on amazing shoestring budgets, but you couldn't tell from the outside, because the holder of the purse strings was judicious about spending.

Years ago, I learned a peculiar thing about corporate or municipal budgets: sometimes a line item has to be spent or it won't come back next year. So there is often some strong impetus to spend $XXX,XXX -- or else -- and the deadline comes on June 30, and often that is how you arrive at bad spending decisions, because it's "burning a hole in your pocket".