Survival budgeting is working out the bare minimum you need to survive on.

The bare basics would be things like your rent, utility bills and food. Afterall these are the elements that ensure you remain safe, warm and alive, and unless you can shop around for better deals, aren't likely to go down. They are generally concidered fixed expenditures.

Secondary elements would be things such as your travel budget, phone (unless you're on a contract in which case financial penalties for failing to pay may make it essential, cost-wise, to pay), insurance, internet, clothing, and savings. These are generally fixed, but may fluctuate more readily than the first tier.

Make an aproximate budget first, then refine it. If you do not monitor your specific outgoings already you may be surprised at how much you actually do spend.

Do not attempt to have an income exactly meeting your outgoings. Attempt to put a little asside every month or week. A standing-order to a savings account is usefull for this, though the classic savings-jar technique may also be easier.

Without a plan you won't have money.

It is a fact of the world that you will have to deal with money.  You will probably have to raise it, manage it, and use it.  Without a good plan though you will most likely find that money just isn't plentiful enough for you to Get Things Done like you want to.  The goal of Create a Good Credit Rate for Myself also requires a good plan.  Having a good credit rating is invaluable in the modern world.

Budgeting 

It is very, very difficult to reach a state of permanent financial well-being if you aren't diligent with your budgeting.

The first step to making a budget is to track your spending - down to the last penny - for a month (preferably two) and find out just what it is that all your money goes to. Many times people are shocked after doing this.  Some people really think they only spend 50 or 100 dollars a week and find out later that they spend upwards of 200 a week.  

Now on to the matter at hand!
Once you have fastidiously tracked your spending for at least one month, it is time to do some analysis (and remember, you can't "analysis" without "anal," so track every single last detail and, if you have one handy, get out your largest, blackest butt-plug. You might want it later.)  Keeping receipts can help if you aren't too good at keeping things down on paper.

Step 1: Categorize your expenditures into broad groups, then break it down by percents and absolute dollar values. For example:
INCOME: +$2200/mo.
Rent: $350 - 15.9%
Utilities/DSL/Cable: $100 - 4.5%
Debt: $200 - 9.1%
Savings: $800 - 36.4%
Groceries and meals: $400 - $18.1
Gas: $100 - 4.5%
Pets: $50 - 2.25%
Booze/Bars: $50 - 2.25%
Misc/Entertainment: $156 - 7%


Step 2: Make some easy choices.
Some people think that reducing one's spending and increasing savings is somehow destined to be a pretty awful and painful process. This couldn't be further from the truth. Most folks, having once tracked their spending over an extended period of time, are rather horrified by the results and eager to slash a few items from their budget.

This is where you get a lot of the very cliche budget-reduction advice: Are you spending $5 a day on coffee drinks at Starbucks? Knock it off - treat yourself to one during each work week instead, and you will save about $80 a month. Spending $100 a month on autographed mint-condition Wham! LPs from eBay? Please, for the love of all that is sacred and holy, up that to at least $250. That sort of thing.

The advice might be cliche, but it's still good. If you see yourself wasting money, just knock it off. Your bottom line will thank you, as will your future self, who will be fishing off the coast of Aruba instead of working as a greeter at a WalMart somewhere outside of Buttfuck, Minnesota. (Although I've heard Buttfuck is gorgeous in the springtime).


Step 3: Make some hard choices.
OK, so it wasn't too hard to talk you out of an $80/mo. Starbucks habit, was it? Or maybe you've been wanting to quit that $5/day cigarette habit for years anyhow, and this just seemed like a great time. Well done. Those were easy choices that you needed to make, and you did the right thing. Now it's time to figure out where to trim the fat when it starts to hurt.

RENT: Rent can be painful to you in the extreme, depending on where you live. Very few people would consider relocating across the country, away from family and friends, just to save a couple hundred bucks a month. Discussing what it costs to live in certain cities and then telling people to move to Wyoming is dumb, but here's what works: No matter where you live, there is somewhere in the same city that is probably renting for about 8-12% cheaper than your current place. If you're not in any financial squeezes right now, then don't worry about it, but if times are getting lean, consider finding another apartment. In SF or NYC, scaling back by 10% on your tiny, one-man studio can mean saving ~$200/mo.

YOUR CAR: Driving a brand-new leased BMW when you earn $40,000 a year might not break your bank, but there are many, many more intelligent choices that you could have made. Take a look at what you pay for your wheels (and add up everything: gas, insurance, garage fees, etc.) and decide if a downgrade mightn't be a good idea (you don't have to go all the way down to a 1993 Geo Metro, but a nice late-model Toyota never killed anybody). Besides, if you're paying hundreds and hundreds a month for the Benz in the hopes of getting chicks, a $50/mo. gym membership would be a much sounder investment.

COOKING: Eating 2 meals a day at a restaurant will seriously break your bank. There is more to eat at home than Top Ramen (though we all know Ramen is cheap). Fortunately, you all have the wonderful resource of Goons With Spoons to tell you how to get started. I cannot stress this enough: Sack up, stop being lazy, learn how to cook: It will save you at least $100-200 a month and improve your general health and well-being.

LUXURIES: Life without a few luxuries can be dull, but a new MacBook Pro one month, a 37" LCD TV the next, and before you know it you're making 50 grand and still at less than zero in the savings department. Don't let this happen to you: Plan big purchases very wisely, don't be impulsive, and do plenty of research on prices. Several portions of the SA Forums can also be helpful for this.

YOUR CHILDREN: Children are incredibly expensive, and unfortunately, for the last hundred years or so there haven't been hardly any employment opportunities for them here in the USA, meaning that it's almost a certainty that your kids aren't pulling their weight, financially speaking. Fortunately, you can send them to India, where they can work as phone support team members for Dell, Samsung and the like. Not only will they learn valuable lessons about the imporance of hard work, but you will no longer have to worry about feeding them, clothing them, or wasting any more money on pricey plastic action figures.


Step 4: Run a real-time pragmatism test:
OK, so first you tracked your spending. Then you swore off Starbucks, quit buying books you didn't read, traded in your luuxury car and sent your kids to Ghana to work in a salt mine for nineteen cents an hour. Great start! The problem is, your great start is only as good as it is sustainable.

Shoot to reduce all of your expenses and increase savings by around 10% a month. I say this because (A.) spending can almost always be cut by 10% and (B.) because, if you shoot for more than 10%, you probably won't stick with it. A life of eating only Ramen, driving a used Yugo, and watching TV on a mirror pointed towards your neighbor's living room just isn't fulfilling. At some point, you need to spend a little scratch on yourself. After all, you did earn it - you just don't want to waste it.

Once you figure out how you're going to cut out that 10-20%, go for it. Take another month, do your best to stick to what you've budgeted, and keep writing down every penny you spend. At the end of the month, sit down and ask yourself these questions:

1. Did I do it?
2. How easy was it?
3. Do I WANT to keep this up?

Obviously, if you couldn't do it, you set too ambitious a savings goal. Maybe ratchet it back by 5% and start over. On the other hand, if it was a total breeze to cut 10%, why not shoot for 20%? Find that perfect zone where the amount you're saving feels rewarding in itself and you WANT to continue living on that budget because your life is pleasing to you. Continue to refine the budget every couple of months as needed.

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Money is a system which represents actual value.  Rather than bartering goods and/or services for other goods and/or services, money may be used as a representation of value (or method for keeping score, to look at it a different way). Kind of a simple concept, I know, but stay with me, here--there are probably some aspects to our monetary system you haven't thought about before.  

Money, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, but unfortunately most current implementations of monetary systems have lost much of their relationship with actual value, and thus have obtained a power all their own, independent of the actual resources involved (i.e. goods and services).  

Money as Debt--Many modern economic systems in current use feature something known as Fractional Reserve Banking.  This means that a creditor (banker, loaner, etc.)  may lend out more money than they actually have, need only to have a fraction of the load held as a reserve in case the borrower fails to pay.  This means that when a bank makes a loan, they really are making the loan, actually creating (most of) the money being lent out, based on the borrower's promise to pay. 

If you think about this for a moment, it sounds almost too ludicrous to even consider, but that is essentially the way our economy functions (and has since long before you were born).  

If you then think about this for a moment, you will also realize that this means our economy is doomed--there will never be enough actual money to pay back the borrowed money, so we'll never get ahead, but instead--thanks to interest--the gap is always going to increase.  This is bad.  

So, like I said--money is not inherently evil, but our methods of going about it sure do seem kind of ass-backward.   

If you haven't done so, I would highly recommend watching the (40 min. or so) documentary animation entitled 'Money as Debt'.  You can find it on the online video sites, no problem.   

People with this Idea

	Title	Author	%	Category	Thoughts
	Become well educated in scams.	Agent Pugsly		Belief	Idea Group:  Money Idea Category:  Belief I really want to know more about the scams that are abundant in the world.  I've started reading http://quatloos.com/ which is a scam educational resource page.  It's pretty good!
	Convert USD money into something else.	Agent Pugsly		Belief	Idea Group:  Money Idea Category:  Belief Apparently you can get foreign currency CD's at www.everbank.com .  They also seem to have lots of other services to provide a person who is interested in diversifying their savings out of the US dollar.
	Money	angiewoot		Criticism	Idea Group:  Money Idea Category:  Criticism I prefer the gift economy over money (on a small society level) for a few reasons: -people can still generally get what they need -less greed: the haves aren't lusty over useless products -advancement of goods for people, not for profit -less division of people over economic/social class -more community-building in the sharing of creations/things made -less people exploited in monetary affairs (whether it is the consumer or producer)
	Money	sikander		Belief	Idea Group:  Money Idea Category:  Belief I like money!

Consumerism is basically the equation of money (or the things money can buy you) with happiness and fulfillment. 

Consumerism is purposely driven by entities who want you to buy things.  Advertisement campaigns (by definition) do their best to influence people with the intent of creating and/or strengthening desire to buy more 'stuff'.  

In practice, humans are frequently capable of surviving (and even thriving) without succumbing to consumer traps.  This involves thinking for oneself, analyzing the actual value of an object (or service) as relative to one's own wants, needs, and personal beliefs.  

This is not always as easy as it sounds, because everybody seems to want a piece of you (or, more precisely, your money).  As members of modern society, we are constantly bombarded by communicatons designed to sway our desires in a particular direction. 

Consumerism is actualized when someone buys something for any reason other than actually wanting or needing it.   This creates waste of resources, and adds power to those who would manipulate your mind for their own gain. 

People with this Idea

	Title	Author	%	Category	Thoughts
	Buy antiques in the Midwest and sell them on the coast.	Agent Pugsly		Belief	Idea Group:  Consumerism Idea Category:  Belief In the midwest heirloom class furnititure is somewhat more common than it is on the West coast.  Sometimes this stuff shows up in auctions and rummage sales.  Many places in the midwest will have rummage sale days for an entire town or area.  These are exceptionally good times for hunting out high quality antiques.   Antiques are usually very bulky items so it would probably be best to ensure item sale before shipment.  This may mean that a storage unit needs to be had somewhere centerally located in the midwest for agents to hold purchased goods unti they are ready for mass long-distance transit.
	Exotic Cigarettes	Agent Pugsly		Belief	Idea Group:  Consumerism Idea Category:  Belief "Premium, hand rolled, exotic, blah blah" cigarettes in a glossy pack.  Each in an individual compartment.  Marketed as a premium object.  Target college kids on vacation and in magor dance club strips.

The economy is broken. We all know this, and we can all point out different angles on how and why it's broken--big money is in bed with the government, the control of national/internation interest rates is in the hands of a private few, fractional reserve banking techniques, slave wage capitalism, and on and on.

So, since we've identified a problem--the economy is fundamentally broken, and we're suffering because of it--now, it would stand to reason that the most empowering thing to do, would be to try and address the problem, figure out some possible solutions, and then try to get the ball rolling in a more positive direction.

Let's try and list some of the specific areas in which the system is suffering...

- So-called Slave Wages--most people make enough to scrape by, but it takes a massive percentage of their personal resources (time, energy, concentration, emotion) to function in society as a 'normal'.

- Interest rates are privately controlled--in America, that would be the Federal Reserve. So, not only do we have this artificial money being created by banks and creditors in the form of loans and other debt, but we have a very small group of private/quasi-governmental bankers with their hand on the throttle of our economy

- Consumerism--corporations drive the consumerism attitude through marketing and buy legislation through lobbying, creating and inflating desire for shiny, new stuff, causing much waste, and also the need for more money (earned painstakingly from too-low paying jobs) with which to buy the shiny, new stuff.

- Debt--we've been at this crazy game for so long, that there's an enormous amount of debt, and a very uneven distribution of wealth--so, in order to fix this system, we're going to have to sort out who really gets what and somebody's toes are going to be stepped on.

- Wealth & Power--disproportional weath relative to the general populace often creates disproportionate power over people. Simply said, a relatively small amount of people control a relatively large amount of the total 'money' floating around in this convoluted system that has us in its tendrils--money tends to bestow power, and those with power tend to want to keep it (or gain new power).

- Apathy & Distraction--the People as a whole do still have power, but many (or even most) people tend to be apathetic to what's happening (for reasons ranging from lack of belief in their ability to change things, to lack of direct discomfort caused by the deficiencies of our system in their own lives) or too distracted (by personal situations--i.e. life, trying to work enough to make enough money, trying to fit in, television, pop culture, gossip, and a million other things) to even notice there is a problem.

- Ignorance--whether because of all the distractions of society, or because of the failings of our education system (and i don't just mean k-12 here), many people simply don't understand the reality of the situation which has control of their lives.

I don't know what the answers are, but I do intend to find out.

People with this Idea

	Title	Author	%	Category	Thoughts
	Star Trek can be a positive model for improving Human Society	cidviscous	99	Belief	Percentage:  99 Idea Group:  Monetary Reform Idea Category:  Belief Yes, I Said Star Trek TNG More So Than the Old School I can envision a society where the system of society in which we all participate is tuned to be the most fair and efficient for maximizing the potential of its citizens.     The closest representation I've seen for this so far is that of the Federation in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The Federation doesn't use money, but people still work--this work is motivated by other factors (curiosity, sense of duty, pride, desire to explore, enjoyment, etc.).   People aren't forced into shitty, pointless jobs for the sake of making ends meet, but are instead matched up to tasks best suited for them, and usually for 'higher' reasons, such as the above motives.   The elimination of the artificial contrivances imposed by traditional economies such as socialism and capatalism also eliminates much of the waste and improper distributions, instead maximizing people's potential.  Everybody is working toward a common goal of making society better by using their individual skills and resources.   Kind of like an open source society.