With the world financial situation being in such a difficult position as it is at the moment, the question of "why budget?" has never been more relevant.
Even if you are only primarily concerned with your own personal, private money situation, or whether you may have responsibility for another's money supply, the importance of budgeting is still very relevant.
So let's just consider what a budget is.
Budgeting is all about controlling your finances.
It is a way of making yourself aware of how much money you have, and how much you will need to spend in the foreseeable future.
The period you are budgeting for can be anything from a few days to a few years, but the longer the budget period is, the more the need to periodically review the various amounts to see if they have changed and need updating within your budget summary.
The ability to create a reasonably accurate budget forewarns us how much money we need to be earning to cover our forecast expenditure.
This is now a very important "tool" particularly in the current global financial crisis.
Your budget will forewarn you of any impending problems that are likely to arise whereby you may have insufficient funds either in earnings or savings, or a combination of both, to be able to meet your particular financial demands.
Forewarned is forearmed so they say.
A the very least, once you are aware of any shortfall you can think about taking some sort of avoiding action, such as cutting expenditure in some areas, or increasing your earnings somehow.
The important thing is, that budgeting puts you in the position of knowing if there will be any impending problems in advance and hopefully gives you invaluable time in which to take some sort of action before the problem turns into a crisis.