CASE STUDY ON BUDGETING STRATEGY(ONE)

                                                               50-30-20
MATT works as a Consultant for a marketing firm and earns #70,000 monthly. He’s single and plans on getting married before the end of the year. He just moved into a room and parlor, a location where housing is affordable. He’s in his early thirties and wants to start planning for his future. He realized that he needs to start budgeting his money ahead to give him the chance to achieve his financial goal for the year. His company has been restructuring (cutting down staffs by reducing their excesses) which made him start planning for his future too. He decided to use 50-30-20 budgeting to manage his finance.

50%– EXPENSES—#35,000

In his monthly expenses, he planned for fixed expenses like rent, feeding, transportation, utility, debt (pay off the loan he collected to pay things into his apartment) and he pay into his younger sister account monthly for her upkeep in university. She’s the last born and only sister.
He decided to break down his expenses by allotting certain percentage to each of them to help manage them well.
For FIXED EXPENSES, he budgeted half of his salary: #35,000. These are his expenses:

19%—–RENT——#6,650

Matt pays around #80,00 yearly for his rent, he budgeted this amount to help him settle his rent to avoid quarrel or insult from his landlord because of late payment. He decided to choose this way to manage his finance.

5%—– DEBT——#1,750

He decided to budget this for his 8 months to one year debt of around #35,000. The amount gets deducted from his account by the loan company monthly. Once he done settling his bill, he will surely reallocate it to support his rent, feeding or transportation.

3%——UTILITY—-#1,050

Electricity, water, security and others which rounds up to this amount. It’s either higher or lower based on how the bills come in each month and must one way or the other balance his budgeting.

9%——FEEDING—#3,150

He bought all the needed food items, He eats at home and take food to work for his lunch. If time do not permit him to cook, he eats outside just occasionally in a restaurant with extremely affordable price or snacks and drinks which he budgeted certain percentage for. If there’s any excesses, he moves it to feeding to have more at home.

11%——TRANSPORTATION—#3,850

His distance to his work is not much. There are trekkable distance to help him manage his transportation budget. Most times, he joins tricycle, if he’s caught up in hold-up to avoid lateness to work but all inside the budget.

 3%——-HIS SISTER——-#1,050

He budgets this amount to his sister monthly in school to take care of herself and meet her needs in school. He can also increase the amount based on fluctuation in other expenses.

                                               30%—SPENDING—-#21,000

These includes hanging out with friends, gym memberships, data plan for mobile phone, cable network, movies, travelling, haircuts and acquiring a professional course for his skill to help him grow his career and learn a business to start small poultry business too.

                                             2.1%—DATA PLAN FOR HIS PHONE——#1,500

MATT spends this amount on data plan for his mobile phone monthly.

                                                 0.6%—-HAIRCUT—–#400

He spends this amount cutting his hair twice a month.

 14.3%—-PROFESSIONAL COURSE——-#10,000

He’s currently doing a consultancy programme to get upgraded in his place of work or look for job somewhere else with raise, the programme runs for the next six months which prepares him for the professional body examination.

4.3%—-BUSINESS SKILL ——–#3,000

He started his business course on poultry to start a side business later in the year. This training takes place in weekend and last for more than a month for more in-depth and practical knowledge of the business.

  3.6%——CABLE NETWORK —3.6%—-#2,500

He prefers watching movies at home than the cinemas and love selected stations, he decided to pick the one that’s the most affordable.

  5.1%—–HANGING OUT WITH FRIENDS —#3,600

He loves hanging out with friends once or twice in a month to also have the time to meet new friends and network with people too.
Matt do not like travelling or gym membership. He prefers watching movies on TV. He also prefers strolling and trekking once he’s less busy.

20%—–SAVING—–#14,000

Matt decided to start setting the entire 20% aside to saving and plan for his future for emergency, unplanned job loss, plan for his personal project in the future and other things. He pays himself first before touching his income by automating #14,000 to a saving account he opened.

                                                           CONCLUSION

With this, Matt could see excesses in his finance and redirect them somewhere and be more organized. If he’s done with paying up his debt, professional course and business skill he will redirect the money for his business plan, real estate, marriage to help him plan more ahead to become financially secured.
The amount and person is just a case study to help understand better how you can really budget your money in a way that makes you comfortable to help achieve your financial goals for the year.

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