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.