Blonde Businesswoman on a Badass BUDGET

Do you feel like being on a budget would limit you? Let me tell you it is LIBERATING. Structure and savings with your money is POWER.

If you are in the mindset of immediate gratification, I need you to turn the switch to TREATING your FUTURE SELF. By creating a budget and allocating money to savings FIRST - you are quite literally PAYING yourself first. If you follow these few tips below - you TOO can afford a $1,300 suit and $600 pair of heels - but hey it's all about balance, I'm current wearing a $2 Walmart sweatshirt while writing this LOL!

Savings

• 401K - I put 20% from my paycheck (BEFORE TAX DOLLARS) into my 401K. If you don’t have a 401K and you are reading this and you are thinking, “Taylor - how on earth will I put 20% of my paycheck into a 401K when I barely have any $ left over after paying my bills!” Here is what I will tell you - you don’t have to start at 20%, even if you started at 1% - hey, something is better than nothing and Rome wasn’t built in a day!

• Personally, I started at a 5% contribution and every 6 months, after I started my first job, I increased that by another 5%.

• Savings Account - I put another 20% of my paycheck automatically into my savings account. Some months I may put more $ into my savings because I didn’t spend that much, but sometimes not and that is okay because I know at a minimum, 20% came out of my paycheck without my even seeing it or wanting it to be in my checking account. You can't miss it if you never saw it in the first place.

Percentages per Expense Bucket

I’m not saying this is the RIGHT way, i'm just sharing what is working for ME. *Percentages are per month.

• 401K - 20% pretax

• Savings Account - 20%

• Rent, Utilities, Cell Phone - 36%

• Groceries - 11%

• Other Expenses (Spotify/Hulu/Nails/Amazon/Gym Membership etc.) - 12%

• Vacation Fund - 3.75%

• Christmas Fund - 1.25%

• Entertainment - 10%

Envelope Method

Having cold hard cash in an envelope is a method coined by Dave Ramsey and one that my parents taught us early on.

Actually feeling the money in your hand, leaving your possession and then eventually seeing that there is literally no money left gives a feeling of realness and tangibility that you don’t get when you swipe your card.

• While I think this method is amazing, it's not alway attainable to go to the bank to get cash, especially in a pandemic, or to be carrying around a few envelopes of cash when I travel every week.

  • Instead, if you feel like this is unattainable for you RIGHT NOW, I offer you this - when you leave the house, unless you are intentionally going to do an errand - leave your wallet at home. Do you really need to bring your card with you when you go out for a walk? If you see something you really can’t live without or wait until you get home to have (i.e. coffee or a bottle of water), you can always go back out later with you wallet to buy it but I can guarantee you will start second guessing a lot of smaller convenience purchases.

  • With the envelope method, I recommend “Spending” every dollar. What I mean by that is this - if you allocate $100 for groceries this week, but you only use $80, put that other $20 into some sort of savings. Now, whether that be your actual savings account or perhaps a stash of money that you start building up for Christmas or your next vacation, allocate those dollars for each budget cycle so next budget cycle you start again with a fresh $100 in that envelope.

Importance of Treating Yourself

With savings, comes the importance of 'TREATING YO SELF'. If your budget becomes all work (bills) and no play (entertainment/alcohol/clothes etc.), your budget will start to become more stressful and more like a job you don’t like. Build in wiggle room for yourself as your play money.

Based on my budget, I build in $100 each week for “entertainment”. This includes going out to eat and coffee money!! I keep my grocery money separate.

Thinking about when you get paid vs. when bills are due

When creating your budget, look at when you get paid versus when you pay your bills. Allocate your dollars per paycheck, i.e. I get paid on the 6th and the 21st, and I pay all my rent and utility bills at the end of the month.

SO, I allocate money from my first paycheck towards other bills that I have that I can control when I pay them (i.e. gym membership, $ for my nails, Beachbody etc.), so that way I'm not feeling “Rich” in the beginning of the month and feeling like I have all this extra money to spend and “poor” at the end of the month when I have used up almost all of the dollars from my second paycheck.

• Allocate big 1 time bills throughout the year- try to allocate dollars for 1 time bills throughout each budget cycle. What I mean by that is I allocate $ for my amazon prime in every budget even though I pay the 1 time yearly fee for prime. When you do this, especially with the envelope system (to be most effective), you help yourself from having a huge dip in your account when you have to pay those bills once a year.

  • When you have big expenses coming up, try to plan for those in each budget cycle. For me, that means vacation and christmas but for my boyfriend that means $ for his board exams - make it work for YOU but remember, when you fail to plan, you are planning to fail so having a plan will help you succeed!

• Happy to share exact numbers of my budget breakdown 1:1 or walk through building a budget if you need, just DM me! For deeper, quick financial tips slipping into your IG stories I highly recommend following @therealvijaykailash