One of the greatest tools that I have learned from seeing a therapist over the last year (exceptionally helpful – I would highly recommend it!) is assessing, daily, the circumstances that I can and cannot control. It’s a helpful practice that allows me to direct my energy towards actions that can actually affect some change and to expend little on the inconsequential and incontrollable. So, I’ve been focusing on firming up my finances – more specifically reforming my budget using practices like the snowball method, the 50/20/30 model, and multiple banking accounts for my discretionary spending and specific savings objectives.
The results can be found below, as depicted in these 100% accurate and mathematically correct visual representations of my budget as a 20-something and my budget as a 30-something. The graphics are color-colored, of course, according to “needs,” “debts and savings,” and “wants”.
Jen’s 20-Something Budget:
- Rent that probably (definitely) contributes to gentrification
- Eating Out
- Groceries that will inevitably go bad from eating out
- Books
- Fucking Student Loans
- “Savings” (to be raided at the end of the month)
- Alcohol – Fun
- Alcohol – Existential Crisis
- Alcohol – Ladies Night in the Gayborhood on Tuesday (??!!) nights filled with awkward, semi-passive aggressive dancing
Definitely Outside Budget, but YOLO:
- Travel – Budget level accommodations that play techno versions of Adele songs
- Alcohol – Potlucks and 20s Themed Parties
- Brunch
Jen’s 30-Something Budget:
- Rent for an apartment that should have gone to a nice Latino family, but instead went to you, you God damn yuppie
- Eating out
- Groceries that will inevitably go bad from eating out because, you know, change is slow and hard
- Books
- Therapist (actual person, not alcohol)
- Fucking student loans
- Savings (for future wedding, children, parents and potential collapse of the USA)
- Alcohol – single 8 PM drink on a Friday night with long-term lesbian partner
- Not-So-Sketch Travel
- MALM dresser from Ikea