How to Adult Vol. 3: Budgeting

You’ve written your resume, got the job and now you’re making the money. Now what? Do you spend it all on the things you want? NO! People have a common misconception that now that you make money, you can just buy anything. To effectively budget, utilize the 50/20/30 rule. What this means is that:

• 50% of your income or money that you have should go to all the expenses you have in life.

• 20% should go to financial priorities such as if you owe, or towards your own personal savings.

• 30% you can freely spend on any of your lifestyle choices such as eating out, shopping, and all the things you wanted to spend your money on.

Now of course you can change it up a bit, but you should always have 50% go to expenses and at LEAST 20% into savings. It is absolutely crucial that you learn how to effectively budget the money that you have because in the long run, you’ll be thankful that you saved up that money for a rainy day. For example if you get a ticket that you can’t pay for right now, you have that savings money to help you out with that.

That’s it for now, I don’t want to bombard you all with too much information but I do hope that this information was helpful to you! If you have any questions feel free to email me at christopher1112@csu.fullerton.edu or message me on Facebook.

Christopher Te is currently a 3rd year majoring in Psychology at California State University, Fullerton. He is a Behavioral Interventionist at Behavioral Health Works, Inc. as well as the 2015 - 2016 Kiwanis Family Chair at CSUF Circle K.