Yesterday, I researched financial management apps again and discovered that what’s important isn’t data collection and analysis, but budget management. By pre-allocating money, managing expenses, avoiding overspending, while establishing regular savings, we can achieve financial goals.

Along the way, I learned about the concept of zero-based budgeting. Also known as zero-sum budgeting, it involves giving every dollar a purpose when building a budget plan. Monthly income is allocated to needs and wants, as well as short-term and long-term savings and debt repayment. The goal is for your income minus expenses to equal zero at the end of the month.

NerdWallet recommends using the 50/30/20 rule. 50% of your income goes to needs, 30% to wants, and 20% to debt repayment and savings.

The same concept can be applied to time management. How we allocate our fixed 24 hours each day indicates what kind of life we lead. Similar to the time block concept, if we consider half an hour as one time block, there are 48 time blocks in a day. Some are allocated to sleep, daily routines, and meals; some to work; and from what remains, some must be given to entertainment, with the rest available for interests and projects we want to try.

This corresponds to two different time management concepts. One is completing scheduled tasks and freely using the remaining time; the other is scheduling all 24 hours, filling them with sleep, entertainment, work, and things you want to do. I now prefer the latter, firstly because I can’t manage myself and want more monitoring; secondly, I’ve begun to accept that purposeless entertainment merely passes time, while planned entertainment can be truly enjoyable.

(Note: This article was originally written in Chinese and translated to English by AI. Please excuse any imperfections in expression.)