Statistically, two-thirds of Americans live by the seat of their financial pants.

Last year, the Gallup organization found only one-third of the population produces a detailed household budget.

So the City of Natchez’s past budget practices should come as no surprise. In years past, city leaders derived most of the budget by taking last year’s expenses and carrying those over — plus a bit more here and there.

That approach works to produce a budget, but it doesn’t always produce a good budget.

The result is often a flawed plan that must be revised and changed throughout the year.

We applaud the aldermen who spoke up Tuesday and said, “No,” when pushed to simply rubberstamp a budget that showed an $857,000 general fund deficit.

Like any deficits, the currently budgeted general fund deficit is a problem.

The bigger problem is that aldermen — whose job is to appropriate funds to cover city needs — don’t know what is causing the budget deficit.

Aldermen wisely tried to work through the issues Tuesday, but didn’t make significant headway. We agree with Alderman Mark Fortenbery who suggested the aldermen would be wise to seek a $1 million expense reduction to help cover for the general fund deficit.

On a $37.7 million budget, $1 million equates to a 2.6 percent reduction in budgeted expenses.

If aldermen and city department heads work together, they can locate 2.6 percent in savings without cutting any vital city services.

Even the two-thirds of us who don’t make a plan for our own finances could probably work that out.