I guess you can say I’m not your
average 21 year old. I guess when people graduate they’re probably looking
forward to their new car, fabulous apartment, and the paychecks they’ve been
waiting for since they started college. I however, was pumped to start budgeting,
yes, I’m a loser. The summer before my last semester of college I found Dave
Ramsey, and I was hooked. However, Dave Ramsey would not be my #1 fan, because
when I graduated I bought a new car. Given, it was a Honda Civic, so the
cheapest car on the lot, and I knew this could last me at the very least 10
years. What this has taught me, is I’m not a huge fan of debt, and I want to
snowball my way out of this as quickly as possible. Money isn’t everything, but
it can give you the freedom to do the things you love. Because of this, I try
to stick to my budget, which is still fluctuating at this point, as I’m
settling into the real world. I manage to live on half of my post tax and post
retirement income, which I am planning on sticking with for as long as I can.
When I was graduating, I kept wondering what a realistic budget would look like
for a single person. For geographical reference, I live in CT.
Rent: 775
- -this includes heat and hot water, it’s not the nicest apartment in the world, but it’s close to work and they are also currently putting a gym in the building which is nice
Internet/Electricity: 75
- -this is the cost of internet/cable, currently we have I want to say 100 channels, but we only wanted it to watch football, and now we don’t really use it. Electricity ends up being around $40. I pay for cable and my roommate pays for electricity. She either gives me cash for the difference or will use it to buy household items we typically split
Car Insurance: 120
- this is one I was super curious about, my car insurance comes out to being around 120 a month, I paid it as one lump sum when I bought my car to save money, but I thought I would include it for anyone that is curious. It is high, but I am young (therefore higher risk class) and don’t have the insurance bundled with anything to bring the cost down.
Car Payment: 140
- ugh, I hate this, and I pay a lot more than this when I make payments, I’m hoping to have this paid off by the end of summer.
Food: 160
- I’m still working on nailing this down, but right now $40 a week is pretty average, something I could improve on, but I love food, so we’ll see
Gas: 60
- although I have a short drive to work, I’m about a 2 hour drive from family and hour drive from a lot of my friends, so depending if I have plans to go home this fluctuates. Also my Civic gets pretty good gas mileage, which is a perk
Restaurants: 50
- I bring my lunch to work everyday and rarely get take-out. This is set aside for if friends ever want to go out to dinner. Restaurants to me are more of a social activity, rather than a I don’t want to cook thing. I think a lot of people would be surprised if they tracked how much they spend eating out. I think I read that millennial's spend more money eating out than they do on groceries, that’s kind of scary
Subscription: 5
- the only subscription I have is Apple Music, because I can’t stand all the commercials on the radio, and I like to have music downloaded on my phone to listen to during work
Miscellaneous: 115
- again, I’m still settling into my place, and we’re still buying things we need. Who knew you should buy fire extinguishers, or that you needed special stuff to clean an electric stove? This also is “fun money,” for random activities like rock climbing, and then I am in desperate need of finding some new sweaters for work. I expect this to be lower in future months, and I would be surprised if I used all of this, but I wanted to give myself some wiggle room
Total: 1500
Note that my lovely parents have
told me I don’t have to worry about my phone for a couple of months, so part of
my savings goal this month is to save the money needed to pay off my phone and
then pay them for the rest of the year of phone service. I think I owe around
$160 on my phone and it might be $30 a month to be on their plan. That is what
I’m saving for at least. Also this doesn’t include little things such as
birthdays and holidays, just because there are none I need to account for in
the month of March. Alright, this is what a budget looks like for a single
recent grad, that’s trying to live on half of their income (this will be great
when my car debt is paid off). Check back in for an update at the end of the
month of how I did sticking to this budget, and let me know if you have any
suggestions on how I can budget differently moving forward!
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