Apparently its common at age 27 to finally be holding all the adult cards in life. Your done with graduate school by then, and your loans grace period is up (and the period where you made so little money they didn’t ask for any. Oops compounding interest). You’re probably on you own cellphone plan and health insurance. You may have skated by with car insurance through your mom or dad but now they’re handing that over too. You’re paying rent and bills and living your life while realizing that that future with kids and a family really isn’t that far away…
Some of what is above is true for me and I am finally admitting I need to budget, for real. Thus far I have gotten by and “budgeted” by knowing I wasn’t spending all the money on my paycheck every two weeks, and when I did dipping into my savings. A year and a half of that later and my savings is dwindling quite low and new expenses are coming my way. I have had a Mint.com account since a friend showed it to me in college but I never really used it. I thought I should start with something more simple and then when a real budget comes together, transfer it over to Mint for upkeep and tracking.
A co-worker sent me this and its a really quick way to see what your budget is looking like. I’m on phase one of tracking my expenses for the month to see exactly how much is going out for groceries, food, entertainment, travel, etc. Panic attack coming soon.
http://www.kiplinger.
I think my thirty, forty, fifty year-old self will be thankful I owned being an adult.