At this point, the tools are so good that it’s close to zero effort on my part, and solves so many financial planning problems:
One is, how much money do I actually have to spend right now? Account balances don’t mean anything here. You don’t have that full $3k balance to spend if rent is due tomorrow! And what if I need to pay an insurance bill in 6mo that costs thousands? My account balance doesn’t know that, but a budget item can save for it periodically. So I can rest assured that the “available money” shown in the budget is real, I can spend it (or save it) on anything, and every known expense or bill is still accounted for. Not to mention, it automatically makes sure every credit card transaction results in money set aside for the credit card bill.
It’s hard to quantify the stress you avoid by knowing for sure that you still have the money for big recurring expenses after spending a bunch on something fun. This was more impactful when I was making less money, but it’s so nice to make sure the handful of big yearly bills are already taken care of, and I won’t have to come up with $5k more than normal when that happens.
Also, it’s extremely worthwhile to analyze your spending habits. It’s a chance to understand the true cost of owning your car, or if you spend more on dining out or groceries. That gives you power to make changes. You can easily realize what habits have an outsized impact and what are probably harmless. If you want to have money to buy a house, maybe you need to cut back on an expense. Well, saving $20 on coffee each month won’t be much. But saving a few hundred by using rideshare less might help.
And you get all of that just for spending a few minutes each week double checking the budget categories on automatically imported transactions. The app does all the hard work!