Learning to save money

This is by far the hardest thing I've done since being an "adult." When I have spare money that doesn't go to bills, I want to spend it, but I can't, because you need to have an emergency fund, or what I like to call mine is a rainy day fund (RDF), for if and when something happens, you're prepared.

I remember watching Friends, and when Monica lost her job, her dad was telling her it would be ok because she did what he told her to and put 10% of each pay check into her savings for if this ever happened. She didn't, and was completely screwed. Now, for some unknown reason, that 10% rule has stuck with me, so each pay check I put 10% of it into my savings account, along with $50 every two weeks that automatically transfers from checking to savings (so I don't have to pay a fee to having a checking account, which is stupid), but I've been following that pretty well.

Now, when I first started a savings plan, I went too overboard, I was saving for RDF, then trips, rent (since I was starting to pay it for the next month, I wanted to start saving up for it a bit early in case I needed extra), and my 52 Week Challenge (52W) that I'm doing. Now this was changing every week, but basically was almost $200 each week taken out of my paycheck, which is about half of what I make every week.

This was spreading myself too thin, and was killing me within a month. I followed through with this for 5 weeks, and it did save me when I needed extra cash, but that was because I was taking so much out of my paycheck. I've stopped doing that, the rent money I saved up for trips went towards my credit cards because I wanted to pay them off before I even tried to save up for the trips I'm doing this summer, and then my rent money went to rent in a way, it went towards the house bills I've talked about in my other posts: utilities, garbage, electric, etc. I am still saving my RDF and for the 52W, but It's a lot easier to handle taking out $50-75 every week instead of $200.

However, as I've been looking at this awesome blog about living the minimalist lifestyle, I've learned that you should have 3 months of bills saved up in case something happens like an accident or losing your job, then you have that cushion to fall back on. Well, by doing this 10% thing, it's going to take me a while to get to that 3-month mark haha! So, I may have to reevaluate my strategy a little bit, but like I said, I'm learning!