Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's why a budget could be the key to feeling less deprived, not more. Hosted by Frances Cook.

If someone tells you they're trying to stick to a budget, your first response is probably... a grimace.

That's because budgeting has a terrible image problem, where we think of it as depriving ourselves, and never doing anything fun.

This is actually backwards, as without a budget we can easily get caught by mindless spending, which soaks up our money and means we can't afford the other things we really want to do.

So how do you do it, so that you get the good stuff without missing out the rest of life?

For the latest Cooking the Books podcast I talked to PocketSmith CEO Jason Leong.

We discussed the different ways of budgeting, how to make room for the things you love, and whether open banking could help.

If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/ Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/ and Twitter here https://twitter.com/FrancesCook