Put money into savings if at all possible. This is partly for "the miracle of compound interest," and more to get yourself into the habit of having the savings account be the one where money goes /into/ and not /out of/. Even $25-50 a month helps. And as noted, if you don't plan for it, you're likely to not do it.
If you can automate that, so much the better. Work lets me split my direct deposit among several accounts, so my checking account never even sees the money for savings. If that's not an option then maybe set up automatic recurring transfers with your bank from checking to savings.
(Ideally you want to have 3-6 months worth of expenses in a savings account where you can get at it quickly if necessary.)
Okay, savings rant over. Looks to me like you've covered most everything else. Don't forget to account for insurance and glasses in the 'other medical' category, and cell phone under 'utilities.'
Budgets suck. Saying "I will spend this much" is a good way for me to feel guilty when I spend more than that. What worked for me was tracking expenses and saying "okay, I usually spend about this much on this thing, which means I have this much left over for that other thing." Because I'm a geek and in front of a computer all day I built a spreadsheet, and I've entered every single thing I spent money on into it for the last five years, categorized and all that. (This has the added effect of keeping me from buying snacks from the machine because I don't want to have to enter "0.80: chips at work.")
It looks like my 'household expenses' (mostly groceries but also cleaning supplies and trips to the thrift store for clothing etc) came in at under $200/month while I was living by myself in (not-cheap) northern Virginia. As always, YMMV.
Lots of irregular expenses can be guesstimated: 'about how many times will i use the T in a week: two? three? how much does that cost? multiply by four' kind of thing.
Looking at your math... is your fn2 taking into account that you'll be paying 20-25% of that 24k/year in taxes?
As whimmydiddle says, setting up an apartment has a large initial expense. That's a place where (generalising broadly) it's probably okay to ask for parental/etc help.
Also, yay you for a) thinking and b) seeking advice about money.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2011-03-22 02:36 pm (UTC)Put money into savings if at all possible. This is partly for "the miracle of compound interest," and more to get yourself into the habit of having the savings account be the one where money goes /into/ and not /out of/. Even $25-50 a month helps. And as noted, if you don't plan for it, you're likely to not do it.
If you can automate that, so much the better. Work lets me split my direct deposit among several accounts, so my checking account never even sees the money for savings. If that's not an option then maybe set up automatic recurring transfers with your bank from checking to savings.
(Ideally you want to have 3-6 months worth of expenses in a savings account where you can get at it quickly if necessary.)
Okay, savings rant over. Looks to me like you've covered most everything else. Don't forget to account for insurance and glasses in the 'other medical' category, and cell phone under 'utilities.'
Budgets suck. Saying "I will spend this much" is a good way for me to feel guilty when I spend more than that. What worked for me was tracking expenses and saying "okay, I usually spend about this much on this thing, which means I have this much left over for that other thing." Because I'm a geek and in front of a computer all day I built a spreadsheet, and I've entered every single thing I spent money on into it for the last five years, categorized and all that. (This has the added effect of keeping me from buying snacks from the machine because I don't want to have to enter "0.80: chips at work.")
It looks like my 'household expenses' (mostly groceries but also cleaning supplies and trips to the thrift store for clothing etc) came in at under $200/month while I was living by myself in (not-cheap) northern Virginia. As always, YMMV.
Lots of irregular expenses can be guesstimated: 'about how many times will i use the T in a week: two? three? how much does that cost? multiply by four' kind of thing.
Looking at your math... is your fn2 taking into account that you'll be paying 20-25% of that 24k/year in taxes?
As
Also, yay you for a) thinking and b) seeking advice about money.