Money doesn’t buy you happiness…was never spoken by any person that was lacking it. More than likely it was invented by rich people who tried to buy their happiness with material things, only to find that more stuff didn’t fulfill that empty void inside. However, if you’re hungry, or have to pay rent, or take care of family, more money definitely buys you reprieve from the stresses of simply existing.

Most of us weren’t taught how to budget. If there was a course on budgeting, we would all zone out and fall asleep within the first five minutes of class. Budgeting is boring. Spending money is fun. But spending money we don’t have is stressful. Somewhere there’s a balance. That somewhere starts with being aware of how much you spend versus how much you earn. So if you are serious about learning how to budget, then pull out a sheet of paper or open that word document and get started (warning: the next section is the most basic thing you can do to figure out whether or not you really can afford avocado toast):

Here’s a tutorial, with unrealistic, made-up numbers:

1) Write down how you much earn in a month: Example: $1,000

2) Write down rent/mortgage: $300

3) Write down utilities (gas, electricity, water, phone, internet, etc): $200

4) Write down groceries: $100

5) Write down anything else that you can think of that you pay on a monthly basis (car payment/insurance, health insurance, etc): $100

In our example, we start with a monthly income of $1000. Adding together all our “necessary” expenses we have $700. Subtract expenses from income leaves us with $300 for avocado toast! Nice. Unrealistic, but nice.

There you go. The most basic budgeting guide you could start with. If your response is “what about…?” then you are ready to start making your own budget! How detailed you want to make it is up to you. You can make your own, use a whiteboard, or simply Google the thousands of free budgeting sheets you can download for free off the internet . The hardest thing about budgeting is to simply do it.