Why I'm Rethinking the Word "Budget" (And What I'm Trying Instead)

In my work with clients, I keep circling back to how much our money language reflects whose story we've inherited — and whose we haven't. Sometimes the words we use around money carry someone else's history entirely, even as we're trying to rewrite our own.

My first degree was in English — I've always been someone who loves words, loves researching their origin stories. So when a word starts making my body tighten, I get curious about where it came from.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the word budget. Turns out it has an interesting origin: it traces back to the Old French word bougette — a small leather pouch used to carry daily essentials. By the 18th century in England, it referred to the leather briefcase the Chancellor of the Exchequer carried to Parliament. The word only became about personal finance after a 1733 satirical pamphlet mocked the government's fiscal plans as a "bag of tricks." The public ran with it — and here we are, still using a word that started as a government briefcase.

No wonder it doesn't feel like my word.

The Word That Never Fit

I don't like budget. I never have. It sits in my body the same way diet does — tight and restrictive. Like something you're supposed to do but never really want to do.

I know what it does to me. And I've started paying more attention to that feeling and wondering about the information it's giving me.

What My Grandmother Knew

My grandmother — who passed two years ago — had a phrase she used to say in her lilting Caribbean accent: cut and contrive.

It meant making it work with what you had. Being resourceful but also conscious of what you could and could not spend. She had been a seamstress for most of her life. And what I admired most about her, when I think back, was her ability to make a lot with very little — while staying generous and fun.

She wasn't budgeting. She was cutting and contriving. And there was a flair to how she approached money.

What I admired most about her was her ability to make a lot with very little. Her language was her own. And that feels like a different thing entirely.

Her words often come back to me in random and silent moments.

Renaming the Document

Recently, after I stopped avoiding getting my business taxes done, I noticed that when I went to open my budget spreadsheet, I felt dread. Not mild reluctance — actual dread. And I sat with that for a moment instead of pushing through it.

Then I thought: what if I just renamed it?

So I did. Budget became my MMP: Monthly Money Pulse.

And something shifted.

Pulse is a body word. It's alive. It's not a verdict or a performance review — it's just information. It asks: how is the money moving right now? Not: are you doing it right and is everything accounted for?

I find it lighter. More curious. More mine.

Why Language Is Part of the Work

I'm not saying that you rename everything and poof, all your money worries disappear. That's not what this is.

What I am saying is that for me, it's a small seed that points toward rebellion and liberation. It gives me a little more agency in a space where I've often felt none. And I think that when we are rewriting our own stories about our money legacies — which so many of us need to do — all the words we use need to make sense to us.

In my work with clients, I see this all the time. The moment someone finds language that actually fits — for their body, their identity, their lived experience — something starts to shift. Not because the circumstances changed, but because they got to reclaim their voice.

The words we inherit around money were often designed inside systems that weren't designed for all of us. Words like budget, debt, net worth, income — they arrive pre-loaded, built in contexts that assumed a certain kind of person, a certain kind of family, a certain kind of relationship to work and survival.

Some of us have been trying to manage our money using language that was never meant to reflect our experience. And then wondering why it feels so hard.

Changing the words won't change the system. But it might change your relationship to the work — and that matters.

If this resonated, there's more where this came from. Join my monthly newsletter Reclaiming Mondays — stories and reflections on living in rhythm with your body as we explore money, its histories, and the legacies we're rewriting.