By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed October 30, 2026.
Mental accounting is the habit of sorting money into separate mental buckets and treating a dollar differently depending on which bucket it sits in. Operators do it on paper, with capital and operating budgets and with this year's money and next year's. That's why the same purchase can be impossible in May and easy in December, or impossible as a capital buy and easy as a lease. The field voices mapped that calendar this year. The research on mental accounting explains why it works the way it does, and how to sell into it.
What the Field Voices Said
The clearest map came from the Energy Growth Playbook, the site behind Mark LaCour and Matthew Bertram's Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing Podcast. Its team built a budget calendar from the show's own episodes, where the word budget comes up 191 times across 49 shows. Operators set next year's budgets in the fall, and “a request that misses October waits twelve months.” Approved money often reaches the account in February, not on January 1. From March to September the year is spoken for, so you're selling a change to the budget, not waiting for a new date. When a buyer wants something now and has no capital line, the calendar suggests leasing it so it lands in the operating budget. And because unspent budgets tend to shrink the next year, some buyers want to commit leftover money late in the year.
The site's objection guide adds two readings worth keeping. “Not in the budget” is usually narrower than it sounds. “Come back when next year's budget is set” is a timing answer, and often an honest one. On cycle length, the hosts treat 24 months as normal for enterprise deals in oil and gas, and the site's answers page gives a range of 6 to 18 months or more.
Matthew Bertram added the view from the other side of the desk: five years of defending marketing budgets with attribution spreadsheets, which Bertram described as close to a career-killer.
Why a Cognitive Scientist Cares About Buckets
My degrees from Occidental College, 2009 to 2013, are in cognitive science, with an emphasis in neuroscience, and in diplomacy and world affairs. Liberal arts training taught me to look at a problem from another field's angle. Budgets are finance on paper, and the people running them are still human. The psychology of how people label money shows up in every operator's spending calendar.
Money Lives in Buckets
Richard Thaler laid out a model of mental accounting in 1985: people sort money into separate accounts and judge each purchase inside its account, instead of treating every dollar as interchangeable. In a 1999 review, Thaler laid out the moving parts: how people see a gain or a loss, which account they assign it to, including budgets for categories of spending, and how often they check the books.
Heath and Soll showed what happens when a category budget runs low. People set budgets for categories of spending and track against them, and a purchase that clearly belongs to a category eats into that budget and blocks other purchases of the same kind, even when there's money elsewhere. That's the research behind “not in the budget.” It usually means this bucket is spent, which is a narrower problem than no money at all. Ask which bucket your product falls in, and whether it could honestly fit in another.
Why a Lease Can Get a Yes
The podcast's lease workaround moves the purchase from the capital bucket to the operating one. Prelec and Loewenstein's double-entry theory explains why that can change the answer. The pain of paying depends on when and how the money goes out, relative to when you get to use what you bought. A lease changes both the bucket and the timing. The equipment is the same. The account it hits and the way the payment feels are different.
Use It or Lose It Is Real
When budgets expire, people rush to spend them. Liebman and Mahoney studied US federal procurement and found spending in the last week of the fiscal year ran 4.9 times the weekly average for the rest of the year, and year-end IT projects got substantially lower quality ratings. Operators aren't federal agencies, but a budget that shrinks when it goes unspent creates the same push the podcast describes. Two lessons. Have a simple, low-risk offer ready for year-end money, because that's when buyers decide fast. And don't let your offer become the rushed project that disappoints, because the buyer will remember it next fall.
Why Next Year Always Sounds Easier
Zauberman and Lynch found that people expect to have more slack in the future than they have now, more spare time and, to a lesser degree, more spare money, and that expectation makes putting things off feel cheap. “Come back next year” may be honest timing. It's also that illusion at work: next year's budget will be spoken for by March too. When you hear it, ask to be in the room in October.
The new budget year can work for you. Dai, Milkman, and Riis found that searches for dieting, gym visits, and goal commitments all rise after dates that feel like a fresh start: a new week, month, or year, a birthday, a holiday. They argue those dates open a new mental accounting period and leave past failures in the old one. A new budget year is that kind of date. The fall is when to sell the fix, so it can start with the new money.
Everyone Underestimates the Cycle
Buehler, Griffin, and Ross studied the planning fallacy: people underestimate how long their own tasks will take, because they picture the plan and set aside how similar tasks went before. In one of their studies, asking people to connect past experience to the new prediction removed the bias. Sellers do it with forecasts, and buyers do it with their own internal approvals. The hosts call 24 months normal. If your forecast says six, plan for the longer version, and keep showing up while it runs. Our answers on the oil and gas sales cycle and a deal gone quiet cover the in-between.
Proving What the Money Did
As Head of Marketing at Wetzel's Pretzels, I managed more than eight outside agencies: one building an app, one the website, one the brand, one graphic design, one print design for the caps and aprons. Each of those is the kind of line someone has to defend at budget time. The way I see it, some marketing and branding can't be measured with ROI, but as much as we can, we should try, even if it means extrapolating what engagement could mean in pretzels sold.
Your buyer lives with the same problem Bertram described. Whoever approves your line item has to defend it when next year's budget gets written. Give them the numbers that make it easy: the measurable savings, the downtime avoided, the result on location. Our answer on justifying spend to a CFO goes further.
I also helped get an ice cream brand stocked at Central Market. Grocery runs on its own calendar: in general, buyers review categories on a set schedule, and a brand that pitches outside the window waits for the next one. Oil and gas budgets work the same way, with October as the window.
Where the Science Has Limits
Most of this research studied consumers and government agencies, not operators. Corporate budgets have formal rules. The people applying them are still human, which is why the patterns show up, but the details vary by company.
Federal procurement isn't an operator's budget. Liebman and Mahoney's year-end spike is a strong, large-sample finding about one kind of organization. Use it as a picture of the pressure, not a forecast.
The fresh start effect comes from field data. It shows a pattern around landmark dates, not proof that the date causes the change.
The budget calendar is the podcast's synthesis. It's built from their own episodes, not from an industry survey. Every operator's calendar is a little different, so ask.
How to Sell Into the Budget Calendar
Ask which bucket, not whether there's money. “Not in the budget” is a category answer more often than a final one.
Get into next year's plan by October. Miss it and you wait twelve months.
Offer the operating option. A lease or a rental can land in a bucket with room.
Have a year-end offer ready. Simple, low risk, and easy to approve fast.
When you hear next year, book the fall conversation now. Next year fills up too.
Plan for the long cycle. Assume it runs late, because everyone's estimates do.
Hand the buyer the numbers to defend you. The person who approves your line has to explain it next fall.
Be known before budget season. You want your name in the buyer's head when next year's budget gets written, not after. That's the idea behind The Warm Walk-In™. For the dates themselves, read our answer on operator budget timing.
Follow Along
Want the short version in your inbox? The Tailgate is one letter a month from the patch. Sign up at the bottom of any page. If you'd rather see what a buyer sees when they look you up, get your Bison Walk-Around.
Sources and As-Of Dates
Peer-reviewed studies (each DOI checked on Crossref, October 30, 2026):
Thaler, R. (1985). Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice. Marketing Science, 4(3), 199-214. Supports: people sort money into separate accounts instead of treating it as interchangeable.
Thaler, R. H. (1999). Mental accounting matters. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12(3), 183-206. Supports: how mental accounts are framed, assigned, budgeted, and checked.
Heath, C., and Soll, J. B. (1996). Mental Budgeting and Consumer Decisions. Journal of Consumer Research, 23(1), 40-52. Supports: spending against a category budget blocks other purchases of the same kind.
Prelec, D., and Loewenstein, G. (1998). The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt. Marketing Science, 17(1), 4-28. Supports: the pain of paying depends on when and how money goes out.
Liebman, J. B., and Mahoney, N. (2017). Do Expiring Budgets Lead to Wasteful Year-End Spending? Evidence from Federal Procurement. American Economic Review, 107(11), 3510-3549. Supports: last-week federal spending ran 4.9 times the weekly average, with lower-quality year-end projects.
Zauberman, G., and Lynch, J. G. (2005). Resource Slack and Propensity to Discount Delayed Investments of Time Versus Money. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134(1), 23-37. Supports: people expect more slack later, which makes delay feel cheap.
Dai, H., Milkman, K. L., and Riis, J. (2014). The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior. Management Science, 60(10), 2563-2582. Supports: goal-seeking rises after fresh-start dates.
Buehler, R., Griffin, D., and Ross, M. (1994). Exploring the "planning fallacy": Why people underestimate their task completion times. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 366-381. Supports: people underestimate their own task times because they focus on the plan, not past experience.
Field voices:
Energy Growth Playbook, Budget Calendar, Objections, and Answers, read October 30, 2026.
Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing Podcast, Justifying Your Marketing Budget to the CFO (August 19, 2026).
Matthew Bertram, LinkedIn post of January 9, 2026.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.
