To budget or not to budget

Traveling for a long time inevitably means calculating costs, making estimates, assessing liquidity, checking bank statements or in short, budgeting. Interestingly most people who travel do budgeting while as people I know back home rarely or rudimentarily do budgeting. Or as Intuit, the producer of Quicken accounting software, discovered when they launched a new financial planning software. Only few people bought it because there are not many people who do financial planning. I am wondering why. Not that most people I know would not be capable, most of my friends had some financial training, but I guess if you have a steady high income you just think you have enough and do not bother. My travel companion Goga for example worked at a big Swiss bank and she could access all in-house products cheaply and even get first-hand advice from experts. Still she did not take advantage of the resources, as many other bank employees do neither (please read Goga's comment on my statement here and Goga, my apologies for misquoting you). So what is it that people dislike about financial planning? Maybe budgeting means assessing future cash in and outflows, looking at risks and thinking about taxes, insurances and other unpleasant things. Budgeting is basically future planning or thinking about the monetary impact of possible futures. Is it that? Do people just not have a basic "life plan"? Another hypothesis of mine is that people just see costs of information and fees with an unknown pay-back. With the year 2005 and 2004 being good for stock-markets there have been benefits to be reaped. Maybe financial planning should be presented as the joy of present and future income or profits and a job that can bear fruits. Buddhists believe that what you give will come back eventually. Maybe most people are Buddhists when it comes to financial matters.

Comments

[Goga]

well, well... I asked my former company for advice but there suggested to by Swiss Air shares (everybody knows what happened with this airline). Luckily I did not invest and get on with my own financel planing... In the end listening to so called "experts" isn't always the best advice. Did anybady invest dot-com shares in the late ninties?
cheers