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

Zamboanga's Yakan Village is as Mindanao as could be

Image
The author with the Yakan children With today's modern society, and Man's hurry to progress, many of our cultural heritages have been forgotten. Our forefathers, in their obsession to catch up with modern times, have neglected to pass on what we could have counted as part of history. But this ethnic tribe has not. The Yakan people originally come from the Basilan province. During the trying times of the '70s, some of the population opted to move to the safer Zamboanga City, bringing along with them traditions and culture as a means of making a livelihood. Although some of them may have moved on to become more progressive, a small village in Zamboanga City has preserved their culture, which is now known as the Yakan Village. This small group of people earn their livelihood by showing guests the traditional dance, Pangalay , which is also practised by other Muslim tribes, and by selling handwoven goods. Considering the amount of effort put into it and what it symb...
Read more

Jardin Maria Clara

Image
It's about time I featured Jardin Maria Clara on here since I've been going to that park a couple of times now. Anyway, in preparation for today's marathon earlier , I ran with some friends who were also fellow participants yesterday. On the last run , there were only three of us, but this time, we were joined by Jayson, who was supposed to come to the last practice run, but instead slept through the morning. Since this session was held on the afternoon, he finally managed to come. This park is famous for the Butterfly Sanctuary and umm, for couples who like to be lovey-dovey even during the day. Can you see the couple in this picture?
Read more

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