For this month I went through one of the books I got from the Humble Bundle Knowledge Master 101 bundle, Budgeting 101. While I have done my best to stick to budgeting properly over the years, I knew some concepts were missing from my methods and plans.

The truth is that budgeting doesn’t mean sacrifice; it means choice.

Budgeting 101 – Introduction

While my budgeting was lovely, I wanted to take the idea in a new direction. With all the changes coming into my life I felt I needed to organise everything better. The first step is start out with a simple budget. The book goes through the normal 50/30/20 concept for ease of understanding of a starting point, that is, 50% needs, 30% wants, and 20% into Savings or Investments. The broad way to understand this is all your normal monthly living expenses, like rent, contracts, and so on take half your pay – approximately. 30% is free for you to use wherever you want, for whatever you want. Then 20% as your emergency wallet.

That means with R20k salary after tax you’ve got R10k to cover main expenses, such as rent, electricity, water, security, as well as cell phone contracts, loan payments, and insurance. Then you need to make R4k grow for you, as a safety net, and for your future. Then R6k is available for you to use as you please. It should be understandable for a starting point.

You can fiddle with the numbers until they make sense for your lifestyle.

Budgeting 101 – The Simple Bucket Budget

It goes into detail for how to manage your own budget, and the things to consider when life changes for you, such as your first job, getting married, or more. Without any spoilers, it’s most definitely worth the time taken to read. I’ve gone through it 3 times just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

With that being said, it’s about time I choose my next book to go through for this year. I’m not sure at this point what it would be, but if you need tips on the ideas behind budgeting this is most definitely worth the purchase.