Young professionals are learning about the “real world” – which means it’s their first time budgeting! If you budget your money well, your early twenties can be less stressful. To make a budget, first start off with your after-tax income. Then divide it between three categories: needs, wants and savings. Needs are things like housing, groceries, and utilities. Wants are all the things you can live without. And savings are, well – savings! To do that, you can try using the 50/30/20 formula. Needs should take up 50% of your income. Wants should cost 30% of your income. And lastly, savings is 20%. You can adjust those proportions as you go along, in case there are times you want to save more.
Another “real life” lesson for young professionals is the 411 on saving. You need to crunch the numbers now to determine how much you should save and for how long in order to hit your savings goal. That’s where Arvest calculators come in. On arvest.com/calculators, you can play around with different savings variables – timeline, rate of return, and saving goals. This is a great tool for experimenting and coming to your ideal savings plan.