What's the first thing you think of when you hear the word budget? It's a meager little word, one that all too often comes after tight. Maybe you think of this word as an adjective, something to describe a cheap and substandard car or hotel. Budget brings to mind rationing, a kind of money diet. If you're like many people, budgeting is something you do with a kind of deflated spirit: budgeting means bargain bin quality and the sad sense that what you want is going to be just out of reach.

This book will try an altogether different approach to budgeting. It's a pity that the idea of living within one's means should be experienced as such a deficit. This book will try to show that when you apply the principles of minimalism to budgeting, you are neither in a state of self-denial nor trying to survive a financial scrape. In fact a minimalist budget is a particular approach to abundance and fulfillment that may seem counterintuitive to most.

Undoubtedly, what came into your mind when you heard the word budget was simple: money. Money is a thing to be feared, to be saved, to be celebrated when it's there and mourned when it isn't. Budgeting, we are told, is necessary. When you live in a world where there is always one more thing to buy, being cognizant of the fact that you don't have endless resources is just the practical thing to do.

However, budgeting can be much more than this. To put it simply, money is only one of the resources that we should be managing in our lives and possibly not even the most important one.

As humans it is our lot to deal with being finite beings: We have only so much time to spend on this earth, only so much time that we are allotted each day, only so much energy that we can give away before we run into a deficit.