Zero-based budgeting
A budgeting method that assigns every unit of income a job until nothing is left unallocated, so income minus all the allocations equals zero.
Zero-based budgeting starts from the money actually in hand and gives all of it a name: bills, groceries, savings, debt payments, fun. The total assigned matches income exactly, which is where the zero comes from. It does not mean spending everything, because saving and investing are assignments too. Anything left unnamed is the problem the method is built to remove.
The point is that spending gets decided in advance rather than by default. Most overspending is not a decision anybody made; it is the residue of money that had no job. In business the same name means something related but stricter: each department justifies its whole budget from zero every cycle instead of adjusting last cycle's figure by a percentage. Both versions refuse to let last month's habit set this month's number.
The common failure is treating the plan as fixed once written. A zero-based budget is rewritten every period, because income and costs change, and it usually needs adjusting mid-month when reality disagrees with it. Moving money between categories is the method working, not a lapse. What actually breaks it is having no category for costs that only appear some months, which is why irregular expenses belong in a sinking fund line rather than nowhere.