The latter may not necessarily be a bad thing. For those in later life the controlled depletion of capital is often a necessary and acceptable strategy for funding expenditure in retirement.

From a financial planning point of view, doing the maths is the essential step that leads to the correct long term financial and investment strategies, whether they be capital accumulation strategies, debt strategies or controlled depletion of capital strategies.

However, there is a deeper, almost spiritual benefit to financial budgeting. It stems from the self imposed constraints that controlling spending supplies. Far from being a straitjacket,  budgeting becomes a route to freedom.

One of our clients, divorced, looking after two teenage children, working in the public sector and having little understanding but a great fear of money found just that. Before appointing us she had no spending plans. On the odd occasion when there was some surplus cash it went into “feel good factor” clothes and accessories which sometimes never got much further than the packaging in which they came. At the same time she suffered acute pangs of guilt at not being able to give her children the treats and trips that she would have wanted them to have.

In three years we have brought a high level of financial organisation into her life, with amazing results. She now has three or four books in which she records her spending. These accurate figures are used to monitor and manage her spending without recourse to those old assumptions and estimates that would inevitably be coloured by her emotions around her money.

The result is a liberating sense of being fully in control; she has let go of those expenses that did not further her goals; there is regular spare cash, some of which is invested whilst the remainder is used to pay for trips to the theatre, gigs and exhibitions with her children which they all love.

She is in control, she knows where she stands with money, as do her children. She is happy, but best of all, so are the kids - all from some simple budgeting.