The trick, disappointingly, is to make so much more than you regularly need to spend that even the unexpected shit stops being noticable.

Like, the kind of scenario where your regular expenses are <50% of your post-tax income.

life has taught me that the definition of pretty well that most people have is FAR BELOW what it actually is.

to put it into perspective: it’s common for a software engineer with 20 years of experience to make $210k/year and that’s what most people’s wages would be if pay had kept up with the cost of living (ie real estate) since the 1950’s.

if you’re not close to this, then you’re not getting paid pretty well; you’re being exploited.

With respect, and without having specific numbers, if you get paid “pretty well” but cannot put away ten dollars per pay period then I fear you may not be spending within your means.

Root cause analysis:

What are the categories of the sources of, and causes of, those random, unplanned for expenditures?

For me, a great help was cutting the incompetent fools out of my life.

The kind who constantly fuck up their own budgets because they can’t do basic math or understand a contract or keep track of subscriptions or automatic payments, the kind who routinely break or ruin their shit and your shit and collective shit accidentally due to ignorance and incompetence, the kind of people that get you to agree to group plans that only work if everyone puts in a modest amount of effort, and then they just put in no effort.