Poll: We set and follow budgets. Yeah, right.
By Holden Lewis • Bankrate.com

If you're a typical American, you believe that it's important -- nay, essential -- to draw up a monthly budget and live within it.

That's according to a national telephone poll commissioned by Bankrate.com and conducted by GfK Roper. Ninety percent of respondents say it's "essential" or "very important" to have a personal or family budget.

And if you're typical (according to the poll), you follow through on your strong conviction about importance of budgeting. You create a monthly spending plan, and you pat yourself on the back for doing an excellent (or at least a good) job at sticking to it, even when unexpected expenses try to knock you down.

And if you're a normal American (according to the poll), you're not some oddball who uses credit to buy things that aren't necessary. You disagree with this statement: "Life is too short to deny yourself pleasures just because you don't have money right away."

That's what people tell pollsters who call and ask about their budgeting and spending habits.

But you're not alone if you wonder if the majority of Americans really do adhere closely to a budget. And do most people truly avoid buying non-necessities on credit? If that's the case, what do they use all those credit cards for?

Maybe the poll respondents were describing how they wish to be, instead of how they really are.

Wishful budget thinking
"There's probably a lot of wishful thinking in this response," says Jared Bernstein, director of the Living Standards Program of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. "It's probably more accurate to say that three-quarters think they should work on a monthly budget. How many do it is tough to say."

That's the diplomatic way of expressing it. Here's another way: "I don't think people were telling the truth in the poll," says Robin Byford, a certified public accountant and Certified Financial Planner who helps oversee financial literacy education efforts for the Oklahoma Society of CPAs. If people really did stick to carefully prepared budgets, they would spend less and save more, she says. "As a whole, we're spending more than we're making."

Robert Manning, author of the book "Credit Card Nation," which looks at the costs of aggressive marketing of consumer credit, says the poll "shows you the limits of self-reporting and underscores the optimism of American society."

Imagine a nation ...
Optimism? Manning explains what he means by imagining another country that shared our employment instability, sharply rising medical costs, soaring costs of higher education and high divorce rate. The anxious people of that nation would save more of their income than Americans do. When it came to budgeting, they would not only talk the talk, they would walk the walk.