As many a new monkeys are currently facing... I am dealing with the reality of getting up to speed at work and adjusting to the real world (budgeting, paying bills and just simply staying truckin' organized). As I sat down to create a spreadsheet to organize my finances... I realized I should try to leverage WSO which I've lurked on for years to try to get some help.
So I ask you, do you have a spreadsheet that you use to track all your different streams of income, expenses, budgets... how detailed do you get? How do you organize it? And most importantly can you send it out (you definitely should)?
In addition, for general financial organization purposes.. do use a website like Mint? or just say truck it and hope you don't spend too much. IRA and 401K investments etc.
just say fuck, you are an adult, i do not have a truck of any kind
Mint.com and automated transfers from checking to savings account are all I do.
I have Mint but go on am hit or miss on using it. It gets annoying when all my passwords keep resetting
Personal Budget Spreadsheet Advice (Originally Posted: 05/24/2013)
Similar to many monkeys, I'll be starting full time this summer as an analyst. As I move into the real world I want to start with a clean budget for what I'm making, spending, and (hopefully) saving.
Does anyone have any advice/guidance as to line items that should be included? I realize these will vary person to person, but most things are generally comparable.
Even better, for some of the older monkeys, can you give a little insight into how much we should expect to pay for certain items? (i.e. when you budget in your drinking/partying how much are you spending in NYC over a given month, etc.).
Any help is appreciated.
Grocery, cable/internet, gas/electricity, weekly eat-out, work lunch/breakfast if needed, loans, gym cost
Some people might have a phone bill depending on job, I do not.
Then whatever is left goes into savings or going out and drinking the money away.
Grocery: $50/week cable/internet: $130/month gas/electricity: $90/month weekly eat-out: $150-200 (live with my g/f so this includes her dinner as well) lunch each work day: $50/week (some people have meal allowance so depends on person) loans: $1000/month gym: $90/month
I eat like a beast cause I gotta maintain those macros. I also live with my g/f so you might be splitting this with other people or not. I usually pay cable/internet and gas/electricity one month and she pays next. Everything else is constant.
$220 a month seems steep for what I assume is a one BR? Ever look into how to cut down the cable/internet bill? Friendly suggestion.
Add $500/month as a 'Misc' expense. If you already have a 'Misc' expense, add another $500. Maybe even more.
I came in to say just take everything that isn't fixed and multiply it by about 25%, but this has the same effect. You will spend way more money than you can even imagine on stupid things.
I started out with a budget for each expense type, but I switched to a simple savings/consumptions model. Figure out what your after tax is each month and how much you want to save. When money is deposited, immediately/automatically put it into a savings acct or similar. The remaining is yours to spend. Start tracking your expenses by category (this is easy if you do mostly credit cards) and then you can see where you are spending frivolously, what you need to cut down on, etc. Mint.com is a great tool to help you do this. Your first few months are going to be expensive because you will inevitably need a bunch of stuff. Also wanted to echo the misc expense. That's going to be a big part of each month, trust me. There's always shit that comes up, random drinks, parties, etc.
Mint.com
i recently got an app on my phone where i enter (manually) an expense every time i buy something and categorize it. every week i export the data as a csv then bring it into my excel sheet and sumifs that shit to have all my expenses in one sheet.
definitely noticed my daily spending has gone down since i started using this because i can actually see how buying cheap $10 lunches every day actually adds up pretty quickly.
i understand if people find manually entering everything cumbersome, but personally i like how it forces me to actually think about how much i spend... and then cut down a bit.
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