10. Budgeting

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For 100 days, I'm going to publish a plus-minus hundred-word post a day on Steemit. These 100 posts will be the insights, routines, and habits of living a better life.

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It’s time to get practical.

Let’s put self-improvement aside for a moment, and start looking at what every one of us cares about at a certain level — money.

I will leave “how to make more money” aside first because I believe knowing how to allocate, spend, and manage your money is 100x more important than how to make money.

Here is how you should budget (according to YNAB— a budgeting app I’m using since two years ago):

1. Give every dollar a job — when your income comes in, allocate every dollar a job. Every dollar. Some dollars are for rent, some are for food, some are for savings, some are for investment, and some are for retirement.

2. Plan for the big comers — we all have some bigger expenses that are not due monthly such as vacation, anniversary dinner, and emergency funds. Give these expenses a job monthly too, so you don’t need to tighten your belt to come up a huge amount with some of those payments due.

3. Roll with the punches — Simply put, be flexible. Most people are having a hard time to assign a job for every dollar they earn, and they ended up not budgeting at all. Be flexible, learn your spending patterns slowly, assign every dollar and be flexible to adjust your budget from time to time.

4. Spend on the last month salary — this is the goal. Spend less than what you earn every month. Slowly you will get to the point where you don’t need current month salary for current month expenses.

Comment below

What's the best money tip you've ever learned?

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Footnotes

I write longer articles about strategic thinking and performance improvement on DeanYeong.com. You can download my book about hacking your habits here.