I’m curious to see what other young consultants do with their money? I’ve never budgeted before and want to do so before I get my first paycheck. Not looking for financial advice, just curious to see where my peers are directing their money.

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A good 50% straight on rent lol

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Early 20s, been in consulting 4 years, always lived a very frugal lifestyle.

I fortunately did not have to pay rent until fairly recently, but now:

1. 35-40% gets put away for bills (mortgage, utilities, etc)
2. About 30% gets spent on food, entertainment, and spoiling my partner.
3. About 10% goes into investments
4. The rest goes into savings (which I spend on holidays, large purchases, etc)

Personally, I started making very little money in the consulting industry, so as soon as I ran into money problems and knew I'm not going to get a payrise - I mentally checked out and started looking for other opportunities. Work is pretty much the same across most companies, and that way, I was able to get yearly pay increases (10-50% per year),which made budgeting much easier, and created room for mistakes and splurges.

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Thank you!

Just good circumstances, some effort and lots of penny pinching😅

Ummm I still don't budget. I just pay rent and then hope for the best. And oh, put away like 10% as soon as I get my paycheck but that's about it

30% on rent, 25% food and activities, 10% fixed charges, rest is saved

Monthly budget:
$1600 rent + utilities
$200 Uber/Lyft
$1000-2000 food + drink + entertainment


Annual expenses:
A few trips a year, totaling ~$5000
Misc. expenses ~$5000

I don’t budget but this is about what it comes out to. Total about $50k and my post-tax income is ~$130k so the rest goes into the market.

And roughly how much in taxes have you all been paying? Financial advisor said to estimate 40% but that seems high. Using online calculators and doing marginal tax bracket calculations by hand, I end up at around 20% in taxes between federal and state combined.

Your marginal rate is over 40% though, so depends what you’re doing with the number. For budgeting, you should use the effective rate you’re getting from those tax calculators

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