I’ve been utilizing “pay yourself first” for over a decade and it works for me. I preset my saving and investing goals which are set to auto deduct from my accounts, I have recurring bills on auto pay, then everything else remaining is fair game to spend guilt free. Could I invest more if I spent less on luxuries? Yes, but then I should have factored that in at step one then redone the exercise again for the following month with less obligated money remaining.

That being said, I do see the value in a formal budgeting solution since at the moment I only track my savings/investments and have a large blindspot to my expenses.