Listen Money Matters - Free Your Inner Financial Badass. All The Stuff You Should Know About Personal Finance.

What does the ideal financially responsible person look like?  Is it you? We’ll discuss achieving financial perfection.  See how you stack up. The ideal person will have no student loan, credit card, or car debt.  Their housing expenses will be no more than 30% of their income, total expenses no more than 50%. They will devote 20% of their salary to investing.  The other 30% is discretionary income. Andrew wrote a detailed post about how you should be investing that 20%.  You get $25,000 in an investment account as your emergency fund first and then can branch out to riskier options.  Age is important too.  In our book, Mastering Mint there is a graph on page 92 showing what percentage of your income you need to save to retire in X number of years. Credit cards can be a tool for the financially responsible.  As long as you pay the entire balance each month.  You can leverage credit cards for travel discounts, cash back, and purchase protection. The ideal person has a budget.  No matter how few expenses yo