Budgeting the Millennial Way
It is extremely tough to budget and stay in your budget when you are young. Us millennials know this too well! We spend money during travels, hanging out with friends, online (oh my gawd the online shopping curse!), and on many subscriptions online. We have been the target for so many years now and it reflects poorly on us for not having the strength to turn down these oh so juicy subscriptions and offers. I have compiled a few ideas for us to at least, try our best to maintain a budget to balance our financial spending.
Excel is your best friend!
You learned the basics back in high school, but did you know that Excel is a proactive lifesaving software when it comes to budgeting? They have pre-built formatted documents for anyone from business plan to home budgeting. If any of them are too complex, you can delete and replace some of the characteristics of the file to simplify its content to a friendlier version of what you can understand. See below for reference from my personal screenshot.
Now, that you know that you can keep up with your budget in Excel, you have to recollect all your expenses in order for you to really keep track of what is coming in (Income) and what is leaving your bank (Expenses/Outcome).
Use a budgeting software
If you can’t stand the sight of excel (I know some folks who don’t like using Microsoft) use one of these budgeting software available in either the android or apple marketplace. Some of these are extremely helpful in compartmentalizing where you are spending most of your funds. The down side is that you are vulnerable to hackers should they hack that software and gain access to all your financial accounts. The possibilities are slim but still, you never know!
List all your expenses
I title this subject “The Millennial Way” to budget, but in reality, it is the same formula across the board for any age groups. Keep track of all your expense statements. School Loans, car notes, rent, food, emergency funds saving (if any), etc… If you skip any of your expenses, you will always be one of those people saying “where did the money go?” Knowing where your income goes is crucial in having a balanced budget. I too was financially illiterate and my budgeting sucked. I am still improving and researching to keep track of my spending. You can too.
Budget Your “LIT” Nights
Oh yes! Don’t think partying, grabbing a few martinis and vacationing are not part of a budget. Based on what is coming in, you should know if you’ll have enough to cover your monthly budget and have leftovers for your saving before going out of hand. You can’t always say “I’ll figure it out on the next paycheck” or the infamous line “YOLO!” You sure live once but you also can mess it up for many years without ever finding great balance.
If you’re religious, budget your offerings
The [extreme] Christian or say (insert orientation) will tell you their 10% is non-negotiable. They will give their church offerings first before anything. No judgements here! Make sure to include them in your excel/budget expenses because they have become part of those going in your pockets for funds.
Get a job/Freelance!
It is a no brainer, without an income you can’t keep up with a certain lifestyle (whatever that maybe). Unless you’re one of those whom live off sugar babying, get some financial actions going!
Budget For Emergencies
A crucial part of budgeting is to put money [aside from your savings] for emergencies. Now, when you read all those bulleted points, you may ask yourself “how much money do I have to make to be able to do all these?” Say for example you only make $24,000 a year (which by the way is absolutely impossible to cope with) you know you have $2,000 coming in monthly, well $1,800 after tax. If, hypothetically, all your expenses amount to, say $1,600, You can put $200 in your savings and $100 in a separate account and name it emergency account. It’s the little bit that counts, it may not be much but ultimately, you’re training yourself to manage accordingly so that you can survive in case of an emergency.
I am not a financial advisor, but from my personal experience I can tell you, you can definitely manage your life on the little bit that you have if you humble your spending. If you’re in the higher income bracket, you still can budget but you just have more leftover for you to go shopping and splurge on yourself or your kids if you have any. That too is another big point. Budget for your minions as well haha.
Should you wish to really get into the needy greedy of budgeting, refer to a financial specialist or in good old millennial way “Google it!”
Informatively yours,
Lafrance