So, as the title says, I am a 19 year old college student who has approximately until the end of summer to get out of my parents house and live on my own. I'm currently attempting to budget, though this came up rather suddenly and I am fairly unprepared for the situation, so I'm hoping to get some advice from people who have more experience.
Let me give you all some background information on myself before I get to the budgeting part. I'm a 19 year old male who's currently attending a community college and working towards a degree in computer science. I work a job in IT making about $15 and hour part-time 38 hours per week. I love my job as it is directly in the field I'm interested in and I consider myself fortunate to work in the field I desire to so early in my life. I've worked since I was about 16 (food service and grocery), though I never saved very much as I spent my money very frivolously. (Oh how amazing it is to eat fast food every day). While I would consider myself lucky to be making what I'm currently making at my age, I only just got this job at the beginning of November and have only adjusted my lifestyle to further blow money away in more spectacular fashion. As far as assets go, I own an old 1996 Subaru Outback Impreza that's in "running" condition. Probably only worth about $500 - $700 depending on the day, though my brother is currently borrowing this from me and we are fixing it up so that he can use it for his own purposes until he can scrape together enough money to get his own personal beater. I'm currently making payments on my spectacular financial mistake of a new 2017 Honda Civic. I currently owe $16796.19 on it and have a monthly payments of $295.83. Other than that, I own two desktop computers (one I hardly use but isn't worth a tremendous amount, maybe $200), two xbox ones (I like to play games with friends, but couch co-op is all but dead nowadays), a Macbook Pro which I recently picked up for work and school purposes, and a few pieces of furniture and household appliances that I've picked up over time and can take with me when I leave.
For monthly costs, I currently have my car payment ($295.83), phone bill (about $180, though I split that $120/$60 with my girlfriend), Netflix and Hulu subscriptions that total about $21 total if my memory serves me correctly, and $100 that I pay to my mother for car insurance. I also own two cats and a bearded dragon who all have their own costs, though they're monthly costs total no more than $120 if I've added that up correctly. Other than gas and food costs, that's about all I can think of for monthly costs.
Here's where I get the most stuck and unsure about how to proceed. Apartments near me are fairly expensive, running at least $800 for apartments and $700 for small, run-down houses. I'm not opposed to living in something less than luxurious, but a lot of the things I've found don't even have things like heating and air conditioning once you get to about the $700 mark. Not to mention that there are other costs involved like electricity, gas, internet, water and I'm sure theres something else that I'm forgetting, but I don't even know where to begin to guess how much each of those could cost. There's also the fact that once I move out of my house, I have to get my own car insurance which will no doubt be much higher than what I'm paying my mother now. For the record, I know I can leave my 2 cats with my mother for the time being, but I do have to take my bearded dragon with me.
I'm not entirely sure what else there is for me to do now. I make just barely too much for most of the low-income house nearby, but I can't afford the regular costs of renting either. I should mention that I don't have anyone that can split the costs of an apartment right now, and I doubt I would do that with anyone I know anyway. My best plan right now, which I want to avoid at all costs but don't expect to be able to, is to sell my car and either go back to my old beater or downgrade to something cheaper so that I can try to mitigate the nearly half a thousand dollar per month that this car will cost me. Other than that, I'm still fairly lost on the subject. Do I have to put my college on hold and try to get a second part-time job in order to avoid living in poverty?
Submitted January 24, 2018 at 12:24AM by simplyfive http://ift.tt/2E54Ohg
