Budgeting For Badassedry

Since acquiring a big boy job and beginning the proverbial "rat race," I have tried to make it as little like the rat race as possible. I have never really walked the path most follow and I like to do my own thing. Just like my parents made it out to do.

Whilst I eschew buying a house and everything considered normal for the time being. Let us talk about the one thing that is supposed to be taboo... Money. Let it be known that I value fun, excitement and interesting experiences more than anything else. Often, I consider living in a van and it would be awesome. But that is me in nutshell.

The trouble begins with figuring out how to pay for all of this badassedry while still being a responsible adult. Therein lies the question. One I have been putting a great deal of thought into and has had me reading extensively about money, finance, investment and everything else.

Sacrifices must be made and spending discipline must be maintained. Although I've always had somewhat of a knack for saving and cutting unnecessary spending. Time comes for kicking it into high gear.

The absolute hardest part about having a budget... is following it. 

I try to keep these things short, but onto our lesson. At a high level, the first thing we need to do is establish some percentages. What amount of your income should go to where? (for the sake of our analysis we're using a $50000 salary). Using paycheckcity for the aforementioned amount and the state of Texas (no state income tax) we get ~$3200 a month to work with.

Now, what do we do with it? 

BREAKDOWN:

25% Necessary expenses (Rent/health/phone)

25% Cost of Living (Groceries/Petrol/etc)

50% Discretionary

We'll get more and more into each of these as time goes by. But this is budgeting at its most basic level.

Skybernation Be Damned

I've met the requirements quite some time ago. But I never got around to knocking out the dumb test for my USPA C-License. I just never saw a reason to it. However, I finally buckled down and just knocked it out. Beaches and whatever here I come! I may even try my hand at a night jump or two, because... why not.

This jump also marked the end of my near six month skybernation due to shitty weather and working weekends. My recurrency jump was also my C-License check jump. So I knocked out the tests and went on my way. My rig was due for a reserve repack, my USPA membership had expired and to top it all off my Cypress needed maintenance. Ugh, seasonal skydiving weather makes my life more complicated. But alas, I guess the rest of the USA can't be like Florida.

While I was spending $400 just to get my rating/gear back into shape a thought occurred to me. I've been reading a lot about investing and budgeting lately. These are things which had always interested me and I've been hitting a wall of fees and unexpected costs lately that has really got my gears turning about maximizing budget potential. This was also inspired by some heavy reading of the Mr. Money Mustache blog.

I've decided to eschew the traditional route of buying a home and all that in favor of living cheaply to maximize economic gains and enjoyment of life.

I do have some expensive hobbies that bring me great joy. But other than that I am quite cheap and live pretty bare. In this blog, I am going to focus a lot on how to afford such expensive hobbies and where you can potentially make cuts.

I want to get a Masters Degree and various Skydiver's Ratings. Those things are important to me and I intend to get them, but it will require some sacrifice. But so does anything worth doing. Let's dance.

Fly!

I am, admittedly, a dabbler kind of blogger. From time to time I am possessed with the unquenchable desire to put ink to paper. So I write. Other times I get distracted with life and all that and forget about this. But it is one of those times yet again.

I suffer from terrible bouts of disinterest and my gaze turns towards to other things. Luckily the blog is something I do for my own enjoyment rather than my day job.

Some time ago... in like November. I took it upon myself to learn to fly a wingsuit. Luckily, some friends of mine back at the great Skydive City in Zephyrhills happen to be instructors of this discipline. So I flew over there for a long weekend.

The short of it is that it was god damn awesome. The long of it was that there is a bit to learn and my ability to pilot the thing is shit. I also have another major purchase to incur so that I may fly a wing of my own. This will lead to another lesson just a short ways down the road. How does one balance life/work... and budget for horrendously expensive adventure/adrenaline sports? Other sacrifices must always be made for those of us with but modest means. But that is a story for another post.