Hello, whinnebers. My name is Jesse Meekam and this is podcast number 132 for you need a budget where we teach you

four rules to help you stop living paycheck to paycheck, get out of debt and save more money. I think it's a lotable goal to follow the approach that

Toyota followed. Then it's a Japanese word and I think you pronounce it Kaizen which

means continuous improvement and as I look

to my own budget I am constantly asking myself where can we improve I see simplification almost always as an improvement. Consider the

number of categories you have and see if you could simplify. If there's something

that you're really trying to track where you're looking to improve, then maybe you don't.

Maybe you leave that category separate and distinct.

What you measure, you improve, but if you don't intend on improving one of those categories or several, maybe you could lump them together.

Consider my fixed expenses category that has about nine bills in it. I don't intend to make

those bills any less than they are. They're fixed. In my annual review I'll look at that category and I'll question every one of those bills and their necessity

But for now I'm pretty comfortable with it. I don't believe that my increased awareness over those distinct categories will change my behavior

any. I'm pretty set on my behavior being what it is and it's okay. So that one

fixed category where we put one fixed amount covers I think it's eight or nine or ten fixed bills

everything from property taxes to life insurance premiums to monthly car

insurance to something as small as Netflix, although I think we did actually cancel that.

But that being said, I think you can simplify and I think it's a worthy goal. What we want to do is just make

things easier and easier and remove friction wherever we can. For those of you that are

tracking cash if it's a large portion of your budget, it's worth it.

If it's a small portion of the spending, maybe it's not worth tracking cash with a separate account. You may consider simplifying the

process. You may just say, hey, we're going to take cash and I'm going to give some to

my spouse and they're going to use that for their lunches and when we record that $100 ATM withdrawal for the next

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