Just for the sake of transparency; I made some poor financial decisions in my younger days, but I'm attempting to rectify them. This is my monthly budget of expenses, my brother was supposed to help me double-check my work, but he's been busy. Anyways, to the hard facts;
27 year old male, next to nothing in savings (just started building my emergency fund, text form budget)
$14.10 an hour/$1602 a month take-home.
Expenses: $1,290 total.
Food - $200.00.
Audible - $15.00 a month.
Rent - Technically $260.00. It's $420.00 still, but I'll go over this down below.
Student Loan Y/X - $50 & $33 respectively (income based repayment plan started a month ago).
Fun allotment - $75.00. I'm over assigning this category since I don't buy many games anymore, but I want to be as realistic as I possibly can.
Travel - $144.00 in gas a month.
Credit Card Payment - $120.00 on 15% interest rate. (Total: $1,631)
College Repayment - $120.00 a month ($1,100 left)
Gym - $36.00
Phone - $36.00
Insurance - $40.00 (this just recently got kicked down last week, from my horrid full coverage insurance of $120.00 a month, ew).
So a few caveats:
Rent - My rent will be $260.00 a month. I had a car repair bill come out of the blue thanks to winter (car slid and really screwed up the passenger side front wheel by hitting a curb).
I'm very handy with car repair, but a service like this required access to a lift and tools I couldn't afford to purchase.
Took it to a repair shop to have it fixed: $2,100 overall. It depleted my starting emergency fund ($300.00), put $200 in cash, $1k on credit card and my brother had to pay $600.00. I had to ask him to cover part of food/rent for that month, as I couldn't come up with the money to pay it. Overall, $980.00 total owed to my brother.
I have him take out in cash $260.00 per month for rent starting officially last month, leaving the current balance of $720.00.
The way I have this setup in my head right now: if I pay back my brother near immediately, that frees up an additional $260.00 a month, which I can then use to kill Credit Card while minimum paying everything else.
My current savings/where my money is being divided:
I opened a interest-yield checking account with NorthPointe bank. 5% APY but only if you meet a certain amount of restrictions, which I believe are do-able for me; 16 debit card transactions a billing cycle, aggregate amount must be $500.00+. Electronic statements (done). And finally a direct deposit of funds or an automatic withdrawal of $100.00 more per billing cycle. I just signed up for this about a week ago, still waiting on my debit card. In the interim I opened the account with $100.00 so I could earn the standard rate of 0.005% that I wouldn't be earning with Chase anyways (in case I can't complete the requirements for the 0.05% this month.)
Ally Savings Account: 1% APY, restarting my e-fund. I opened the account with $60.00 (not much, but it's a start). I'm currently working on percentages for my monthly income that I can safely auto-deposit into my Ally Savings Account. When I get my debit card for NorthPointe Bank I'll be re-setting up my direct deposit to automatically cycle to these two accounts. A bulk majority to my NorthPointe account so I can get that nice 5%, anything safe that I can spare will go to Ally.
My question to you folks: is there anything I can be doing better in regards to saving money here? I'm trying to be realistic with my budget and nail down any unnecessary expenditures. It looks like I may need to bite the bullet and get a part-time job during the evening hours. I have a few hobbies that churn out a few additional bucks, but it's nothing substantial to help income.
Recently I tried a mystery shopper thing as a side-gig but getting payment from them on time is like pulling teeth. Debating weekly plasma donations (3x) to pull in an extra $105.00 that I can assign to debt, but I'd like to not use this option if at all possible.
My 1 year anniversary with my current company is coming up, so I can expect my income to go up $0.50, but still not substantial. I'm actively looking for other positions that pay more, but so far no luck.
A bit about my College life. Junior year student with a yearly GPA/cumulative GPA of 3.5. I don't have a degree. Due to how my tuition was setup at my university I ended up (in that last year) not being able to afford my books, or living expenses. Got a job at a factory 5-10 miles down the road (biked there) but ended up passing out on the factory floor due to lack of nutrition. I was eating a box of pasta a week, if I got lucky. It wasn't a good time in my life.
When I left my university they slapped a fee of $2,800 for leaving classes near the middle of the semester and would not release me from this debt. The $120.00 a month is for that. It's now down to a manageable $1,100 so I'm seeing some light at the end of my tunnel! After that I can get my transcripts from my University and get back into school.
My current work-place offers a 5k tuition reimbursement for IT/Business classes only, so I was planning on taking them up on their offer. I always wanted to go to medical school (that's why I went to the College I did) but the expenses for the overhead are just too much for me to cope with.
Anyways, that's my story (a long one and I'm sorry for that). I really wanted to cover all my bases and provide as much information as I could about my situation. Thank you all for your helpful eyes and responses. Let me know if I can provide anymore information.
TL:DR - There's my budget, could someone double-check me and provide any useful advice I may have missed?
Submitted March 10, 2017 at 09:49AM by Nickadimoose http://ift.tt/2lL4I8L
