Honestly, how do you learn how to budget? Ending 1st full year post-grad and feel like I just have $ and don’t really think about how I spend it. Still under 30% credit utilization (but teetering that line…) and just not sure how to actually get a grasp on my spending and a true understanding of personal finances

Start by tallying up how much you spent by major categories for a month. Break down groceries, restaurants, bars, travel, entertainment, streaming etc. Include rent and utilities. Compare this with your monthly take home. Set a realistic goal ("I wanna save $500 more a month") and work backwards to find numbers that work for you. If you really like eating out, then it's fine to spend money on it. Just know you can't travel as much or see as many live sports etc. If you hate drinking and you're always at bars, set a bar budget.

Ultimately it comes down to setting small, incremental goals and holding yourself to them. Some months you might not hit your goals, totally fine. Try again the next month.

Most people don't really learn about budgeting and how to do it effectively, so I'm glad you're noticing this is a change you need to make.

Highly recommend YNAB! It’s a budgeting app that uses the cash envelope system (give every dollar a job and leave nothing unallocated). I prefer this method because it helped me understand the true cost of impulsive spending (i.e. if I go out to eat even though I’ve already spent my entire dining out allowance, then that means I have to take money out of another category to fund it). This video also gives a good example of how the cash envelope system works and how to budget for annual and monthly expenses so you’re always ahead: https://youtu.be/IUt0zup2bHc

Another thing that helped me is setting up a HYSA using a different bank than my checking account. This is where I keep my emergency fund and I don’t touch it under any circumstances - I don’t even have the bank app on my phone. Because I don’t see it daily, it’s easy for me to pretend that money doesn’t exist.

I'm 20 and found out last week the client was billed £200,000 for me last year under the guise of "senior developer". I make just over 10% of that and embarrassly have very little saved

Using a budgeting app is helpful! Or personally I just look at my credit card apps and banking apps almost daily. Biggest thing for me because my wife and I are still "fresh" out of college (graduated in 2020) we have low expenses. So budgeting to me is more rough estimates. Our net income is 10k/ month, roughly 2k for rent and utilities, roughly $300 for various insurances, 4k to student loans (trying to knock out Baylor nursing for her in 2 years) and then the rest is food, trips, and savings. No hard lines unless we're planning for something big.

Also of note I'm referring major investing until we knock out student loans. Our plan is to always live off of my income only and invest/save hers

"I will teach you to be rich" by Ramit Sethi. Read this. It's very methodical and guides you through practical steps.

Set up an excel spreadsheet and figure out:
1. Monthly fixed costs (rent, utilities, phone bill, subscriptions)
2. Total take home from each paycheck (how much actually hits your bank account)
3. Any ongoing debt you may have (university debt, credit cards, etc)

From there determine how much of your paycheck is spent on #1 and #3. Once know how much you have left after paying for your fixed and variable costs, split the remaining money into a fun bucket and a saving bucket.

The saving bucket goes into things like retirement, emergency fund, etc.
The fun bucket is the money you're comfortable spending and don't need to hit your financial goals.

Short term, you should aim to save up 6 months of food and rent. After that look into investments.

I had this issue too and I needed a really simple way to deal with it. I have a spreadsheet I update once a month that shows all my holdings (bank accounts, investment portfolio) and money out (credit cards). I make notes for any major purchases or reasons for a big swing so I can remind myself later why something changed. I compare each month to months past. I also have a separate section for retirement savings and do the same thing there. Once I started doing this, I was much more cognizant of how much money I have at any given time and what my behavior is like when I am saving overall v spending overall. It only takes me about 10 mins a month to do this.

My first two years out I more or less lived paycheck to paycheck after 401k/ taxes etc. My savings was basically my bonus + <$5k through out the year. I lived in NYC, and recognize that if I didn’t I wouldn’t have gotten to experience the city. Probably not the best advice, but totally normal to not save much your first few years. Get super sharp on the range you’re spending now and be okay with not taking any trips / changing how you spend after your next promo. You’ll be fine as long as you don’t spend more than you make. I also generally don’t focus too hard on saving, I focus that effort on getting a top tier bonus, investing, and any way I can find to drive the top line. Hope this helps

Head over to r/financialindependence and follow their flowchart.

Send money to savings and investments automatically then learn to live off of what you get in your bank account each pay day. If you never have the money you won’t have a chance to spend it.

If you have chase, auto save helps out a lot. I completely ignore my savings account and only allow myself to go off whats in my checking

YNAB is the only app that ever worked for me, and it changed my life. Definitely check it out!

Use YNAB

I think being in your early 20s the big things is you need to learn to but back your fun budget, drink budget, travel budget. I had 30k saved my first year. Now I’m at 200k at year 4

Outside take here but I actually don’t budget. I just live super frugally as a baseline which is likely related to my upbringing. Point is, I know I can afford to spend $X on discretionary, $Y on food, and I keep a general sense of how I’m tracking towards that. I rarely exceed X/2, so keeping exact track of the value is irrelevant when I know I’m in the green.

Just wanted to let everyone know I just ordered $60 of Chinese food again

The standard is the standard.