How are you supposed to monitor your spending if you cannot figure out how much you paid for chicken?
Larger calculations like "how much did I spend last month on groceries" are easily assessed simply by looking at a credit card statement. Being financially responsible does not necessarily entail knowing the exact dollar-to-calorie or dollar-to-weight ratio of every item in your shopping cart.
Yes, you can look at a chicken and say "that's enough for 3 people". Yes - in the UK - it's quite likely (legally required?) that all products are labelled per 100g or per kg (although I'd contest people failing these tests are likely not to be understand or care for that labelling). It's a tough argument to make that these skills have no impact on on budgeting at all.
If you need to get detailed, or your estimates don't line up with what your savings account is actually doing, you can also harness the power of online banking records do half the work for you. I semi-recently went over three quarters worth of transactions and aggregated them by category: "Food", "Home Expenses", "Car Expenses", "Food", "Health", "Shopping", "Subscriptions", "Charity", "Unknown". (Not well covered by this exercise alone but easy enough to add to account: taxes.)
This already was overkill for me. I did nothing but fact check my gut (which was wrong on some details but right on all the macro points that actually mattered - rent, living expenses, and entertainment - exactly as you'd expect with estimates.) Monitoring total spending already tells me I'm where I need to be - with a good rainy day fund, a good savings fund growing at a good rate.
Chicken? Don't know don't care. Food totaled bellow my estimates, which were already low enough I didn't feel them worth the opportunity cost of trying to optimize. That time would be better spent learning how to better negotiate raises and hiring, or learning new career skills. Unknown? Ditto. I happened to subdivide "Food" a little when initially categorizing out of ease and curiosity into "Groceries", "Caffeine", and "Eating Out". Could've saved $633.45 between 1/1/2017 and 8/16/2017 by not buying caffeine, didn't use a lick of manual arithmetic to figure that out. Computers did it for me, and it probably wasn't worth the electrons to even do that.
I think the point is that the ability to count pennies when called upon is part of what keeps your rough intuitions properly calibrated.
If one literally cannot do exact arithmetic when necessary (whether mentally, manually, or with a calculator), then how does the gut learn what to pay attention to, and when it might be wrong?
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_united_states_of_...
- buy a house that is well below your means or even move some place where your cost of living compared to your money earning potential is favorable.
-Get a degree in something that can make money instead of a BS in Ancient Chinese Art History.
-Don't go into debt getting a degree from a prestigious college to be a high school teacher. Go to a cheap state school.
-Buy a car and keep it for longer.
My family spends money on a lot of little things that some people would think was frivolous but we also bought a house in the burbs that had a mortgage that was less than 20% of our monthly net income, we don't drive expensive cars, or try to keep up with the Joneses. My wife still brags about how much money she saves shopping at the thrift store and I'm always looking for a bargain because I don't care about the brand of clothes.
On the other hand, I'm very aggressive about my salary and told my (step) kids to pursue careers (or trades) that had income potential.
In other words, it's not the little decisions you make that make a difference it's the big ones.
You can only by definition, cut spending by so much, but you can make choices to make more money.
After we got married about six years ago, my wife and I by working together have increased our income by 33% by her taking a job that has good benefits but low pay (that she enjoys) that gave me the flexibility of aggressively changing jobs for higher salaries without worrying about benefits.
I found this link, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cta.asp, that says “Of the 1.9 million bachelor's degrees conferred in 2015–16, over half were concentrated in six fields of study: business (372,000 degrees), health professions and related programs (229,000 degrees), social sciences and history (161,000 degrees), psychology (117,000 degrees), biological and biomedical sciences (114,000 degrees), and engineering (107,000 degrees).”
I don’t know how you define practical, but this makes me think many, perhaps most are not practical if you mean worth going into substantial ($50k+) student loan debt.
The worst off are those who did not finished school, but still paid some of it. These are not in your stats, they have no degree.
Besides, those who finished college do better then those who did not in pretty much all stats. They do worst then previous generation. You people make it always sound as if average college graduate was worst off then high school drop outs. It is not the case at all, while college graduates dont have great lives on average, those who finished with high school have it even worst - on average.
But not all business majors are created equal in the job market. Research shows that students who major in general business and marketing are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, meaning they hold jobs that don't require a college degree. They also earn less than those in more math-focused business majors, such as finance and accounting.
Students choose general business and marketing because they hope it will get them job and because they think they can finish it. It is not nearly "Ancient Chinese Art History" (which is not even major, more like a course). I am not saying that students are flawless oraculum in their choices.
However, they are not massively choosing weird arcane majors. The "students need to be told that business majors are less practical then they sounds like" is much different statement then "they need to be told not to go for bachelor in Ancient Chinese Art History".
The called out categories sum to 1.1M. This is 57% of the total 1.9. So I guessed that removing some of the business and some of the social science take it under 50%.
But would definitely need to see all the degree types to know definitively.
I know plenty of places that are looking for intelligent people they can train up. The roles are often non technical but "BS" degree is often a good way for them to get their foot in the door.
Get them in the door with latte factor. Let them read the whole rest of Mr Money Moustache in due time.
(Not to take much away from the results of your job changes and negotiations, but that's just under 5% CAGR. If you are early in your career in tech, lots of people can meet/beat 5% annually. Later is harder of course.)
I'm not bragging. Any dual income household with one being a senior developer in a major city could do it.
Those aren't easy to ratchet down quickly.