As I work to be better at budgeting, I searched the Internet for strategies for how much I should be spending on various items each month. I like the 50/20/30 strategy which seems reasonable and maybe even do-able.

Basically, you split your after-tax, after-401k take-home income into 3 buckets:

50% – fixed expenses
20% – financial goals
30% – variable expenses

So my after-tax income (now that I’ve maxed out my 401k for the year) is $9500. That breaks down to:

$4750 fixed
$1900 financial goals
$2850 variable expenses
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