Budgeting for Twentysomethings [+ My Notion Template]

Mar 27

By far one of the best skills I’ve taught myself has been personal finance. But more importantly, I learned this at the right time: when I was young and just getting started with my career… and earning new-career money.

I wouldn’t call myself an expert—I don’t have an accredited degree in finance or business from a college (yet!)—but I’ve done my due diligence in reading books, listening to podcasts, and researching this topic the old fashioned way: falling down a YouTube rabbit hole.

They say the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, and the second-best time is now. If you’re a twentysomething, or older, and you didn’t grow up learning the basics of managing your finances, here’s where to start.

Why you shouldn’t be afraid of the word ‘budget’

I remember thinking in my teens, ‘Why is everyone obsessed with making these and sticking to them?’ The idea of a budget to me was counting pennies when you’re strapped for cash and seeing you overspent on takeout three months in a row. It sounded like a frustrating, pointless, and even humiliating exercise to keep up with.

But when I started having to keep up with bills and subscriptions, I decided to make my first budget. It made me realize why successful people have them.

I thought budgets were a set of rules you make about where you can spend your money and how much of it you can use for fun, but it doesn’t have to be. Budgets are liberating. With them, you see where all your money is going and can decide on how to better make it work for you.

It’s much worse to close your eyes when faced with your account balance and hope that your paycheck covers everything you need until next month. That’s a cycle of anxiety that you can’t escape without a plan.

Even if you’re struggling to make ends meet, knowing how to dig yourself out of that cycle comes with having a budget. You can’t diagnose a problem without seeing all the symptoms laid out.

Elements of a budget, particularly one you’ll stick too

A budget is a picture of all your finances, typically showing them a month at a time.

I always heard that people made their budgets on Excel. When I created my first budget, I was not particularly Excel savvy, nor did I like the idea of trying to make a system work for me on a platform I didn’t personally enjoy using. (I’ve since found an appreciation for Excel, but in my personal life, Notion is still the way for me.)

Enter Notion. This platform changed the way I kept track of my life throughout the end of college. It lives in the cloud and I can access it through my phone when I’m on the go. One day I realized people were teaching themselves how to track their finances through it.

You don’t have to use this method, you can use whatever productivity app best suits your lifestyle, even the notes app if it’s what works for you, but I do recommend something that you can easily duplicate month to month. Plus, I’ll share the Notion template I use at the end of this blog post.

So pick whatever fits your lifestyle, is it also cloud-based? Do you need a physical notebook to jot things down instead? These are things to consider when picking a method that you’ll want to stick to.

Final thoughts and my Notion template

Remember that if looking at a picture of your money sounds like pulling teeth, it’s still the best place to start if you want to take control of your spending and build savings—and even wealth—over time.

Here is a the system that I use and that works for me, I’ve adjusted this template a bit to fit a variety of typical spending habits, but adjust it as you personally need. Remember to take into account things like debt payments, business expenses, etc.

And if you’re interested in more content like this, I’d love to hear ideas.