I think budgeting and practical finances should be taught at multiple stages throughout a student’s life. I thought I knew the general idea but didn’t appreciate how much neglecting it would set me back.
What is your process for budgeting? As a starting point this article lists a few methods.
I use zero based budgeting where every dollar is assigned a purpose. I don’t end up sticking exactly to the plan, but I do keep a spreadsheet which lists my current balances and all expected expenses, so I can see my future balance and avoid going in the red. A couple times a month I cross off expenses which have been paid and update the balance. This is especially helpful to me because a big portion of my income is irregular month to month.
I mostly use the envelope method. My parents used literal envelopes when I was growing up, and somewhat early in my adulthood and in my career I came upon the online bank Simple. That bank changed the way I look at finances and saving money. So I still do it the way they taught me to do it.
I now use a bank called Monzo, and they are working toward building in a very similar budgeting method to Simple, with “Pots” instead of envelopes, that automatically get filled with money every paycheck.
I previously had Simple, and One before that, but banks don’t seem to like the buckets/pots/envelopes paradigm. You said Monzo is working towards it, what does that look like currently?
They have “Pots” that you can manually move money to, or have money moved to them every time you get paid, or move money to them on a set schedule.
You can link your other bank accounts and credit cards, and have money moved to a “credit card pot” automatically to cover your credit card bills.
https://monzo.com/us/money/see-it-all/