I was determined to put something out tonight, so I just wanted to make a quick note of today.

I delved into the world of personal finance and played around with a few versions of a budget. To assist myself in making the budget, I wrote a little Python script to juggle all of the variables I could think of. These all interacted in a way that I think resembles how the world actually works- as far as taxes and savings and whatnot goes.

The bulk of the advice I’m following comes from Ramit Sethi, whose book, “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”, I was able to check out from the library.

My main draw to Sethi is due to this one line I heard him say. It was along the lines of, “I don’t think telling people to cut out their latte habit is sound financial advice”. Running the numbers, I agree with Sethi that it doesn’t offer a huge return on your effort and just ruins your morning if you love having a latte to start the day.

So finance was today’s focus. Maybe tomorrow will be another Clojure day so I can slow down and really think through a financial plan.

I’ll leave you with the main question I grappled with today: “How much money do you need, per month, to comfortably live after savings and expenses are accounted for?”.