Comments | blitzen_: ugh, money woes.

blitzen_

ugh, money woes.

Jan 09, 2009 18:09

i know there are lots of you on my flist who are seriously fucking GOOD with money - good at saving, good at spending (well, i'm GREAT at that), good at finding deals. i am not one of those people.

i know gemmabowles was having a gripe a while back about ppl who live paycheck to paycheck. unfortunately, i'm pretty much one of THOSE people. as my friend ( Read more... )

house, money, rant

Comments 18

k7point5 January 9 2009, 15:09:21 UTC

Times have been really tough for me recently, also. I have started putting $15/week in my savings acct to build it up without causing too much strife in the checking acct department :) It's working well so far. Before I graduated I never went below $2000 between my checking and savings. I had reliable income and I spent about the same each month. Then I went to Europe and went a little nuts, and came back home and was unemployed for two months. Then I got that shit waitressing job for $2.85 an hour and shortly after that I went and checked my bank acct online and I had -$8.00 in my checking acct, $0 in my savings, and by some grace of God I did not owe any money on my credit card. Still, I was BROKE. I felt awful about myself ( ... )

siobheanne January 9 2009, 18:01:58 UTC

Is that a typo, or were they seriously paying you ONLY $2.85/hr to waitress??? If so, that is CRAZY. Here in Ontario, 'regular' minimum wage is $8.75/hr right now (up to $9.50 by 2012 or some long term plan like that, I think) but for any serving job, it's $7.85/hr because of the assumption of being compensated by tips. But <$3/hr?! I can't imagine that being worthwhile!

k7point5 January 9 2009, 22:01:32 UTC

Nope, no typo :( I literally depend on tips to survive.

blitzen_ January 9 2009, 22:36:05 UTC

that's what i was thinking! omg that is ridiculous, no wonder you were crazy about it. here minimum wage is like $12.50 an hour or something.

i think $15 sounds doable. on payday i automatically have $100 deducted into a savings acct, but i just seem to spend it because i have NOTHING else.

grrrr.

adolwyn January 9 2009, 21:53:58 UTC

I'm still not great with my money (mostly because I'm a tech-gadget addict), but the biggest thing I did was to just take 10% of all the money I received and put it in a separate savings account. Generally, the 10% was absorbed without too much difficulty for me, anyway. So, if I got $200 for christmas, I put $20 in the bank. If my paycheque was $3000/month, I put $300 in savings.

I'm living really tight right now because I bought a new car and financed it over the shortest loan term possible, so I'm putting out $900/month on the truck. But, once it's paid off in 19 months, I'll have that extra money for paying off some debts on top of my yearly pay raises...

But the 10% thing really helped me...

blitzen_ January 9 2009, 22:37:14 UTC

mmm, that's what my dad has encouraged, but i find it super hard not to touch that savings money and to not factor it in when i think about how much money i have available to me... so i end up spending it.

sprinklerized January 11 2009, 03:31:19 UTC

I bookmarked this post to come back to it and comment, so here I am, a bit late to the party! I just want to say HOLY CRAP YES, ESSENTIALS ARE EXPENSIVE HERE. I'm used to spending $20 a WEEK on groceries and stuff, but here it's like $20 every 2-3 days. At first I was buying treats, but now I don't because it's just too bloody expensive. Just to get meat, bread, and fruit/veg is a big drain. Having said that, the prices you listed don't seem that off from what I am used to back home, but then maybe I'm just getting used to seeing them in Australia. I've started a cost comparison post in Notepad that I should put up eventually ( ... )