Well, in the context it was written, to me it equates to 'afford'.lfm wrote:
I don't know if there is a language barrier here - and "budget for" means something else than I think it does.
To me a budget is a calculation of your assets, income and what are fixed spending each month like rent and so on. And you can see what you have left to spend going out for a beer or whatever.
And adding things that you would like to get in the future - you put that in there and see when you might be able to buy it.
That could be next month, next year, or 5 years from now.
To me it sound odd - if cannot budget for just about anything.
And even more odd that anybody is offended by that.
Does "budget for" in english mean imminently buying something?
A budget can be a plan for spending as you say, but it can also mean an amount of money you have for something. If you are buying a car for example and ask for advice, people will ask what your budget is. Can you afford an old toyota or a new porsche? They are not asking about your savings plan for the car.
So to me what was being said was "if you can afford a computer you can also afford software", which is not a universal truth. Some people's financial situations are all over the place, at some points things have gone well, you rush out and buy your computer. Next month everything is different and there's no spare cash for anything.
So if the original comment was intended to mean, "if you can budget for a future computer purchase, you can also budget for a future software purchase", that is more likely to be true, but still not necessarily so.
And, this should have been obvious but maybe it wasn't, not being able to afford the software isn't an excuse for pirating it. It's just an excuse for not buying it.
(edit: also, I'm not offended, it was just the logic that if you can afford one thing, you can afford another thing. That seemed a bit.. insensitive I suppose)

