This resonates with me. I record every purchase I make and every bill I pay in a budgeting app. 90% of the process is automated. So, there's very little I have to do once the budget categories, the goals and limits are set. The system works for me, it gives me certainty and peace of mind with very little effort. Yet, every relative and friend that hears about it treats me as a freak despite them being the ones complaining about money and not knowing "where the money goes every month". It's a lost cause.
Pairs up with my EU and Revolut bank perfectly, auto imports transactions, most of which you can set rules that auto assign to categories. And as they said 90% is automated, I just categorize a few transactions a week manually.
I tried something like envelope budgeting before in excel but didn't work really since I was lazy to manually add transactions, this is much easier. Budegting for a house and a USA trip without worries now :)
Several budgeting apps use open banking api to connect to bank accounts and update the entries (money in or money out). Once it's synced you can assign the appropriate category. Usually, the budgeting app "learns" over time and it does the categorisation automatically based on the payee and your budget.
The system isn't perfect but, in my experience, it works 90% of the time. The remaining 10% requires manual categorisation. I suppose it also depends on how simple or complex your budget and your spending are.
My intention is not to dismiss the blog's argument about using Linux but my experience running an Ubuntu LTS in my main computer has been straightforward, easy and as problem-free as one could expect. I'm sure other Linux distros offer a similar experience.
I get that every person is different, so what works for someone might be dysfunctional for someone else. But I wonder if there's a growing tendency to over-emphasise things that aren't "perfect" or the perceived friction caused by different ways to approach or solve things.
Perhaps it's my own personal bias but the same way I like using Ubuntu, I think Windows is fine, as well as MacOs. They're fine the same way many other products I use are. Often, I struggle to find big differences between the stuff I use. I mean, I can see the differences (often small, rarely big), but I'm the same guy. I'm not that special.
While I agree with your suggestion (that's what I've doing for years), I'm not sure the "almost not effort" point is helpful or realistic when it comes to a huge majority of users.
Apart from people who are knowledgeable or at least curious enough to search for alternative options, I suspect many people don't even know what a domain is or that they could register one for them to use. The jump from "why pay for email if Gmail/Outlook is free?" to "register a personal domain and use it for your emails" is too big.
I don't have the ideal solution but what I've suggested to friends and relatives is they should consider paying for their personal email accounts. Most of them don't care but some do and, as a result, at least try to understand what they want or need and are willing to pay for.
I'm not surprised that the article has that vibe and that you noticed it. Works in Progress, the magazine that published the article, is notorious for having a preference for market-oriented solutions, "laissez faire" policies and neoliberalism. They are open about it. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
It is practically the same, you're beholden to all the laws of the European Union without having a say in them. Kind of like Puerto Rico, which is still considered a US State despite having no votes in congress.
The best book I've ever read isn't the best book I've read but one that connects me with a particular moment: The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov.
It was the start of summer school holidays back in the late 1980s, in my teenage years. I went to my local library and, because I didn't know what I wanted to read, I decided to pick one book blindly from the fiction section. I didn't know what book I had borrowed until I got home. I had never heard about Bulgakov or that particular novel. I had no easy way to know who that writer was or if the book was good or not. I was tempted to return it. But I didn't.
I read the book over several weeks of a particularly boring (and lonely) summer. I enjoyed reading it although I didn't love it. Looking back, I suppose that book gave me something I needed in a completely random way.
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