I just got married last Thursday! My husband will move in with me next weekend and it's time to get serious about budgeting for our future. As of this month, between freelancing and a raise, I make 3160 (roughly) per month. My husband is a student so he doesn't contribute at the moment, though we've discussed him getting a part time job that should yield somewhere between 400-800 a month depending on how much he works. We live in Korea so some things are incredibly cheap and others are pretty expensive. This is my first month actually receiving my full income after the raise. Last year I made between 1900 for most of the year and then 2600 in November and December because of my free lancing. I would occasionally teach at conferences or work for other schools in my area and get somewhere between 100-900 for every job.
But now, for sure, every month at least 3160, so my first paycheck comes in a few days and I'm working on our budget.
Here's what I came up with:
Rent: 300
Utilities: Usually around 10 but we'll budget 35**
Internet/Cable: 34
Phone: 28
Transportation: 300 (a mix of taxis and bus)
Food: 300 (75 per week for 2 people)
Dog expenses: ~50
Class fees: 80
Entertainment / date money: 150
National insurance payments: 140
**General utilities are only 2-5 dollars a month but we need to buy gas for our boiler ever couple of months it's 200. So far we've only done it once in October and it's lasted us this long so we'll keep the extra utility money aside for gas)
Total reoccurring expenses: 1417
Flexible money: 1743
Obvious places to cut money:
Transportation: I have a bad habit of taking taxis that I'm trying to break. My husband has to wake up earlier than me to go to school than I have to go to work so I think that will help me get ready faster and be more prone to taking the buses. Right now I probably spend more like 350+ on taxis and bus fares in a month so I want to bring it down by 50-75 every month until I've built the habit. Additionally when my husband lived at home it meant either an hour+ on the bus or a 10 dollar taxi drive, so I usually took the taxi. Since we'll be living together most of my transportation will be focused on just going to my job and freelance locations
Food: I'm not sure how much we'll be spending on food to be honest. I hope it's less but groceries are notoriously expensive in Korea and we love to eat. Our rental house currently has nothing in it--no fridge, no stove, no oven etc. So we've been eating out due to lack of cooking equipment. I just put in an order for a fridge and two induction plates so we'll have at least basic cooking needs (I have some old pans and dishes from my last apartment) and can cut a lot of our spending from currently eating out (which I always pay for lol) Ideally I'd like to spend like 200 per month but with the high cost of meat in Korea it might be difficult without going vegetarian. I'm going to experiment with having two meatless days a month though.
Class fees: I take recreational classes for cooking and drawing and what not, kind of like a Korean MasterClass thing. I don't /have/ to take them but I like to instead of going out and having drinks or whatever, I'd much rather stay home and bake a cake or something like that. If need be this is spending that can be cut without too much trouble, there's lots of free classes too.
Date money: We don't do anything terribly wild or expensive for our dates usually. Sometimes we'll go to the top tier restaurants in our city every couple months but even then it's never more than 50 for the both of us for several courses. I'd like to keep 150 aside for when we do eat out or want to see a movie even though we will mostly eat in from next month and keep any of the extra money aside for traveling when we have breaks from school/work.
Now for the goals:
Credit Card Debt: None! It cut into my savings a bit, but after we traveled for a month in America I paid off my 2000 dollar credit card bill in full.
Student Loans: 16,000 which will come due in October. I've paid interest the whole time so the amount of money has never budged. By October my husband will have a part time job at least to help cut the expenses down (rent:-100, food:-150, dates:-75 etc) so I'd like to make pretty aggressive payments toward my student loans. So far I have 1500 set aside from my left over savings after our America trip. If possible, I'd like to put at least 1000 per month into that fund and make an aggressive payment against the principle in October. (Hopefully a minimum of 5k but closer to 9k)
Personal Savings: There probably won't be much here this year due to loans. But if I can pay my student loans off within a year of them becoming due then I figure we can put that same effort of savings into personal savings next year.
Questions:
I'm only 21 and I've done my best to make a decent wage and I want to stretch it as far as possible, but I haven't had money for very long and there's a lot I don't know. I've always done pretty well with personal finance and side hustles but my Husband, being Korean, basically has been bank rolled by his mother his whole life. He has a decent work ethic and should get a decent paying position right out of college( around 2500 per month) but I'm worried about exploring finances during our first year of our marriage since he won't get a chance to be very fiscally responsible for any of the expenses, on top of having little financial literacy in the first place.
SO, I'm thinking about leaving the physical act of paying the bills each month to him so that he can get in routine of paying bills. When he gets a part time job, I want him to pay for his own phone and daily spending etc. But I also don't want to come across as bossy or nagging. Any ideas on how to approach teaching financial literacy to a partner without coming off as condescending?
I currently make decent money compared to how much I work. I only work 26 hours per week but I have a decent commuting time for all my freelancing, about 20-30 minutes if I take a bus. So that's an extra 3 hours of me being out of the house. I'm trying to decide on whether or not it's worth taking up more jobs / more commuting to make sure we have even more disposable income per month or if I should keep my schedule the way it is considering we're newly married and spend more time at home with my husband, cooking and doing personal projects together etc.
Third: I don't know if it's a better idea to focus all my financial power toward loans or if I should do it slightly slower and split the extra money between an investment account and a high yield savings account?
Note: I do have an emergency fund, albeit not huge and with multiple income streams so even if one job were to fall through I have my day job and 3+ other side hustles.
March 21, 2019 at 01:18AM
