Let's Learn to Budget!

As a public engineer, you can't really make the kind of money that will get you a nice house, a nice car and even some vacation time. It's all about public service. Once you enter public service, forget luxuries. You can't afford it unless you're paid what only about 10% of government officials are paid. My salary bracket is the lowest among government employees and that's not even PhP 10,000.

*Sigh*

So what can I do in this situation? Let's see. I'm a public engineer paid with minimum wage, living with the parents and that means I don't have to pay for food at home. I can contribute, but I don't have to. I don't have to pay rent, I don't have utility bills, except for my cellphone bill, which I will be downgrading as soon as the contract's about to renew.

What have I been doing with my salary?

Paying the cellphone bill, and buying, umm, stuff. I realize that I haven't exactly been keeping track of expenses, so that's what I am going to do. A few friends and I are planning on going on a backpacking trip to four Asian countries this year, so I gotta make sure that I have enough cash to spare.

So I got myself a budget tracker. I'll be tracking each expense until the trip, making sure that I spend only what's necessary and if I do need to spend in extra, the budget would have to come from the extra money that I have not spent in the last month.

The formula is this:

INCOME - SAVINGS = EXPENSES

If I have leftover expenses money, I'll just add it into next month's budget. I'm not going to put it into savings, because I might actually need some extra cash. I might keep putting it into the expenses pool for the next three months, but beyond that, when I am absolutely sure that I won't spend it, I'll add extra funds into savings.

I'd hate to just put it into savings, but for the meantime, before I put that money into something that will make it work for me, I'll just save it up.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Korokke / Japanese Croquettes

Image
It's been a while since I posted anything that I actually cooked. If I can just afford to cook all the time, I'd probably be posting everyday. But that's not the case. I'm sort of an anime junkie, and about a few months ago, I got into reading the manga Beelzebub too much and even watched the anime until I got to the latest episode. And one thing that stuck to me was the main character was always eating Croquettes, or Korokke , as the Japanese called it. The first time I made the recipe, people on my Facebook friends list have been asking for a taste, but seeing as I can't afford to feed the lot of them, I thought I'd post how I made it, that way they can always make it on their own. Forgive me for the poor lighting on step 8. The power went out while I was doing it. Recipe after the jump.
Read more

Globe: To Renew or Not to Renew

Image
In a couple of weeks, my two-year contract with Globe will end. During that time, I will have to make a choice between renewing the contract and get the reward phone for being a loyal customer, or I can lose the number and go back to being a prepaid customer. I tried weighing my options, if I renew the All-consumable plan that I signed up for two years ago, I will most likely get a new phone, keep paying PhP 999 every month, and call and text anybody as long as I don't go beyond the credit limit given to me. Plus, with the plan I got, I get 6 hours worth of free surfing and some free texts to other networks. Now if I go back to prepaid, I will lose my number, lose the 6 hours worth of free surfing, and I won't be able to call or text anybody anytime if I don't get myself prepaid credits. But get this, with Globe's GoSakto promo, basically I can get myself 500 minutes for calling Globe and TM subscribers and 1000 text messages to all networks, and that'll last me...
Read more

How to NOT Live From Paycheck to Paycheck

Image
Paydays usually fall on the 15th and the 30th. When I still worked at my first call center, and if the 15th fell on a Saturday, we'd get our pay on the 14th. The funny thing was, it's still the 13th and people are already itching to withdraw from ATMs. We'd call the last few days towards the payday " tingbits ". That's short for tingbitay, an expression Cebuanos use that means "running low on cash". My salary used to be between P10,000 - P15,000 at the time. Since I was a fresh graduate, the frugal living that I led and taught my younger siblings were carried over by habit and I managed to live somehow without asking for allowance from my parents. Then I met Lifestyle. I met Starbucks, Bo's Coffee, met with McDonald's and Jollibee as much as I can, and even forgot that I used to see Carinderia to shell out just P20 during midday. Regretfully, whenever it was payday, I always found a way to spend it and just lived from paycheck to pay...
Read more