Houstonians, You Sorta Do Okay with Your Budgeting & Saving, But You're No Boston

You either get some OCD-like kick out of keeping your home finances in line, smiling as you balance your checkbook and budget for the upcoming month, or you run screaming from the mere idea of doing anything involving dollars and math.

But it is important to not be heroically stupid when it comes to financial matters, so people should be encouraged to suck it up and get the job done.

In Houston, a lot of people are good about such things, a lot of people aren't, and a lot of people stopped reading this as soon as they realized it was about money and planning.

A new study by CardHub (self-styled "The Web's Best Credit Card Resource") places Houston a meh-esque 12th among 30 cities ranked on their tendency to budget.

Nationwide, CardHub says, "More than half of all consumers do not maintain a budget, according to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, and roughly 22 percent say they don't even have a good idea of what they spend on things like housing, food and entertainment."

What's amazing to us, sad to say, is that the NFCC's study means almost half of all consumers do maintain a budget. Who are these people?

Also, how is it that 50 percent of people keep a budget, but only 22 percent "have a good idea of what they spend on things like housing, food and entertainment"? Some people, it seems -- say, oh, 38 percent or so -- are piss-poor budgeters. Should you count as someone who keeps a budget if the budget you keep is so bad you don't know what you're spending on housing?

At any rate, there's a complex mathematical formula used to determine the country's best budgeteers, and like we say it places Houston 12th. (We have a "credit score" of 726, for what it's worth.)

The top three were Boston, New York and San Diego; the bottom three were Cincinnati, Tampa and Orlando. Dallas and San Antonio came in 18th and 20th respectively.

The top 12:

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