How I handle money in my 20s

So, I've been wanting to write this post for a while. Lately, I've been taking a more proactive approach to managing money and I thought I would share some of the ways I've learned to manage my income in my 20s.

Full disclosure, I'm 24, married and work full time. My husband works full time as well so I'm a part of a two income household. My parents paid for my university out of pocket so I have no student debt. My husband is now living in Ireland with me so he is currently not repaying his student debt.

For starters, my husband and I don't have a ton of expenses.

Here's what we pay for monthly:
Rent
Netflix
GoDaddy email client
Home Insurance
Spotify
Microsoft
Internet
Electric

Our utility bills and rent are split evenly and my husband pays for Netflix and Insurance while I pay for my email client and Microsoft office. For some reason we both have our own Spotify account.

Recently, while I was researching money, I came across some tips that say you should save 20 percent of your income if you can. So that's what I started to do.

I opened up a joint deposit savings account where I make weekly deposits totalling around 20 percent of our income. This allows us to have wiggle room on big purchases, some cushion for emergency situations, and savings toward our long-term financial goals.

I'm actually a little OCD so I keep up to date physical files on our financial records. This includes payslips, receipts for big purchases, and invoices. As I said, I'm a bit OCD.

A couple of tips

Firstly, try to save something
Cut corners where you can but do try to put something away each month. Even if it's only a tenner each week, it puts distance between you and unexpected expenses. Again, my husband and I save 20% of our monthly income and it helps a lot.

Decide how aggressive you want to be when paying back debt
I borrowed $2000 from my mom and was able to pay her back in 3 months because I was really aggressive in how much I paid her back a month. It's about making a plan and going forward with it no matter how much it hurts.

Write down your financial goals
Even though he hated it, I sat down early on with my husband and wrote down our financial goals for the year. I'm not going to go into detail about those here but listing my goals is a really helpful thing I learned to do ages ago.

Keep financial records
I keep extensive financial records because I never know when it will come in handy. I also keep them because I'm super organized and hate the idea of not being able to find particular information on demand.