Let’s start with your first inventory slot, the Short-Term bucket, filled by your income whether it’s from subs, sponsorships, quests (jobs), or any other drops; everything flows into this bucket. It also has a faucet on it, representing your expenses; all the gold you spend on food, rent, gaming setups, or debt
Objective:
Balance the Flow
To start making progress on your financial journey you need the flow from your income to be stronger than the drain from your expenses.
You may have a faucet that is a slow trickle or a faucet that feels like a firehouse but wherever you stand right now your first step is to start filling this first bucket. There are a couple ways you can accomplish this:
1. Most Important is to understand what is coming out of the faucet. The great thing about a faucet is it works both ways you can open it wider, and you can close it and slow the flow. Learning how to track your expenses will help you see what from your faucet is essential and what’s just draining your gold pouch unnecessarily. Once you know your expenses you can set a budget to narrow that faucet.
2. Another way you can start filling the bucket is to boost your income. Take on a few side quests or grind a couple extra hours. But beware grinding without fixing your spending habits can leave you burnt out.
Once you have stopped the faucet draining all your income you will start to see this bucket start to fill.
The short-term bucket usually lives in your checking account.
Once your short-term bucket starts to overflow, you can move your extra gold into the Intermediate Bucket.
The intermediate bucket is where you start to make some real process towards your goals, your upgrade stash. This is where you fund your epic goals like upgrading to the next NVIDIA/AMD chip, a streaming rip upgrade, or even some IRL things like buying a car or saving for a downpayment for a house! This is also the bucket that will help keep any unexpected expenses or emergencies from totally draining your short-term bucket leaving you will a new debt that you have to add to your expense faucet.
Objective: Build Reserves and Plan for Epic Goals
This is different for everybody, at the very minimum this bucket should hold 3-6 months of emergency funds. However, remember that this bucket also holds your money for your big-ticket upgrades. If it’s a new graphics card or a down payment for your first house this is where those goals get saved up.
This bucket lives in a high yield savings account! A typical savings account at your bank will pay you almost nothing for keeping your money there. However, a high yield savings account rewards you for storing up your money there by paying you interest. Most high yield savings accounts will pay you somewhere between 2%-5% in interest every year just for saving up your coin with them!
Once the intermediate bucket is full and overflowing, you can start funding your Long-Term Bucket. Think of this as your endgame vault, holding resources you won’t even touch for years or even decades until you get to a final boss. This is where you shift from leveling XP one level at a time to making massive XP gains, like 3, 6, or even 10 levels at once! We can get into this bucket more later, but for now congratulations on getting your XP up. By mastering the Three Buckets you will be well on your way to dominating the financial RPG. If you have any questions, be sure to hit up Scruffy in the Gold and Loot Discord. Now, go equip your skill tree, fill those buckets, and lay claim to your financial future!
