Gen Z Guide to FI

No, this post isn’t about how to date on a budget. This post is about my weekly solo dates where I go out to do my budget.

Every Saturday, for the last few years, I spend about 30 mins reconciling my budget from the $ spent the previous week. During this date, I look through all my banking transactions in the past week and manually input them into my spreadsheet budget tracker. I run a very low tech budgeting spreadsheet and it shows me how much I have left for the month. I have pretty clear categories of my top line expenses in it. My process has worked well for me but of course, I’m always open to more automated budgeting tools. That are also FREE.99 (your girl is about to be unemployed soon).

While my sheet is nothing fancy, I do try to make the budget date into a soothing experience for myself. Sometimes, I go to a coffee shop or boba place just to work on my budget. I don’t really spend a lot of time outside of my house so this (no matter how trivial it sounds) is something that gets me excited weekly. It might be the only time in the week I really treat myself. Although updating my budget weekly might be considered ‘much’, I did say that I was a budgetosexual. Did you expect any different from me?

I just thought about this post instead of going to sleep on a Friday night because I got really excited to crunch my numbers tomorrow. I got my annual bonus and it will make a huge impact on my finances for going back to school.

If anyone else does something similar to my budget dates, I’d love to know! Let’s be friends.

XOXO Gen Z Fire Baby