7mo ago

2meirl4meirl

155 comments

If we take out 7k of the gross $46,0000/yr for healthcare and retirement....
$5,700 for federal taxes, another k for state taxes...
That's about $2692 a month, net. Subtract the just over $2k a month listed, there's another $400 a month for.... Utilities, phone, transportation, entertainment, savings, emergencies.
Even as rent is under 25% of income, pretty tight. Doable. But very tighter. You will never retire saving $4000 a year. You can never get sick. You apparently walk to work.
Pretty much have to get a roommate until the student loans are paid off.
- Or start working crazy overtime.
  
  And die.

- Yeah, there's no 'supposed to' – it's not designed
  
  It’s designed to prevent savings and use as much of your income for trickle up economics as possible before your max out your borrowing potential or get sick and die.

Talk with the student loan provider. Get on income based repayment plans, you end up paying more in the long run, but less each month (or none at all) so you can at least eat.
- Is $1k/month student loan repayments in America usual?
  
  This was nearly 20 years ago, but when I dropped out (two years in college, so don't even have a degree), it was all spread across 4 loans (something weird, I dunno, I was a kid, but it was like a new loan for each semester? That didn't even count the parent loans my mom took out for my schooling - thank god they just wrote those off entirely when she died). The repayment ticket book I received was $55 per week for each loan. That was $880 a month they wanted. For about a total of $50k of debt. With the sharp increase in tuition costs since I was in school, I wouldn't be surprised if $1000 total per month is on the low end if you just pay what they ask you to. They don't really tell you that you are taking out multiple loans by going to school, not just one big one.
  I did as the above comment said and got on an IDR (Income Driven Repayment) plan, it basically refinanced my 4 loans into 1 and my monthly bill was now $57 a month, and it adjusts each year around tax time based on the previous year's income. I'm currently paying about $80 a month.
  
  That's much higher than normal. A quick google suggests between $200-$500 is more in line with a normal student loan monthly payment, which is still a burden on someone just starting out.
  
  If you have any hope at all of keeping the interest from ballooning the principal beyond the original loan amount, yes.
  :(
  
  mine is like 280/mo, and my wife's is like 175/mo. i think 1k/mo is very unusual
  
  edit Didn't mean to double post the same comment - internet at work sucks :(
  
  My daughter went to one fucking semester and is paying $900/mo for two years. We tried to talk her out of it but she wouldn't hear reason. She's going to go back to school a little wiser next year.
- I got through college with no loans. But I had a scholarship for a few years that paid 75% tuition. I ended up taking 7 years to graduate because when the scholarship ran out, I cut back on my class load to work full time as a bookkeeper to pay for my living expenses and tuition. I could've done a lot better if I had gone to a community college for at least the first two years but I got duped by university "prestige". Being in the workforce now, I know employers don't care what school you attended.

I want a single bedroom apartment for 850.
- You can get one a lot cheaper than that, but you're going to have to move somewhere you probably don't want to live.
  
  And lose the money you save on fueling your car?
  
  I live near one of the worst Philadelphia suburbs to live in (Chester) and even there you're not going to find a one bedroom apartment for $850. You might find a room in a house for that little. On the flip side, I own a small two bedroom house in a very nice suburb that I rent out for $1400 a month. If you can find at least one other human being that you can cohabitate with peacefully, you can do a lot better than trying to find your own place. Easier said than done, I know - I hate living with other people.
- In Russia we have plenty of single bedroom(they are just called single room) apartments for rent much less than 850. Even in Moscow.
  Also don't be worse than Russia. Please fix.
  
  The old USSR did an excellent job of surveying the future population demands and building housing accordingly. This was called Central Planning and Americans scoffed at it as a thing that couldn't work, because it didn't immediately and immensely enrich the landed class.
  Then the USSR collapsed, the Russian economy went into a nose dive, and Russia experienced an enormous population contraction as mortality rates and emigration surged. Suddenly, they had more housing stock than they knew what to do with, and even the newly implemented property class couldn't squeeze people on the scale of your average Trumpy New York / LA / Dallas landleech. So now you're still wildly overpaying what you'd have spent on housing thirty years ago, and the conditions have only deteriorated since. But you're still somehow better off than some poor sap living in a Detroit slum or a San Fransisco closet or a Miami favela, paying twice as much.
  These conditions aren't going to last in Russia. But as Putin pivots back to a more command oriented economy (trading out old school soviet internationalism for new school national socialism) it does appear they're positioned to avoid the American Techbro system of "Everyone must live in the pod and eat the bugs" that we're currently headed towards.
- 32 easy monthly payments of $850 and it's yours to own

I'm realistically in the situation OP is trying to get at. I'm making over $30/hr, I've been in my career a few years. I pay $1500 towards my housing expenses each month (rent/mortgage, electricity, heat, etc). I pay something like $500 in insurance between my vehicle and home, probably a bit less... My debt repayments are well over $1000/month. I pay $100 each for my cellphone and internet....
I have a slew of other expenses I can't really enumerate. When I factor in food and gasoline, etc, I basically have no money left. I might have $200 left each month if I'm very thrifty with food.
You know what I'm doing? I'm in the process of getting my finances into a system that can help me visualize the spending and plan for my month over month budgeting. I'm trying to find where I can find costs I don't need, and cut costs where I can. My work requires me to have a car, and while my vehicle is older, it works great and is pretty good on gas; best of all, I've paid off my car. I'm trying to dig myself out of this situation I'm in, and get in the black eventually. I'm tired of worrying about debt, which I've been in for nearly 20 years, in some way, shape or form.
- I use ynab (you need a budget) to try and help me out. Emphasis on try.
  
  Solid suggestion. I'm trying to get up and running with something a bit more involved. Right now I'm standing up a firefly III system for myself; I have to stand up an add-on to import data. Still gotta figure out some particulars.
  It's self hosted FOSS, which bluntly, I trust more than anything else. I'm certainly not paying what some companies think their budgeting software is worth on a subscription just to do my personal finance.
  EDIT: just to be clear, I'm not knocking the price of ynab here, I'm more specifically talking about something like quicken, which is between $2-5 monthly to subscribe (depending on which product you get). IMO, it's pretty idiotic to pay monthly to manage your monthly finances. I would imagine most people would use quicken (or a similar app) to reduce their month by month spending on stuff, and the first thing you need to do to get started is to spend more money monthly to have the privilege of doing so. There are obviously benefits and value to doing that, but it doesn't make sense for me.
- If you don't need a ton of data, Mint mobile has a $15 a month 5 GB per month plan. It costs me $201.51 per year. I have to pay a year at a time, but that helped me cut my phone costs by a ton
  
  Heh. I'm Canadian, our telecom situation suckkkks
- Do you pay 500$/month on insurance? Or was that a typo?
  
  Just about. I have pretty comprehensive insurance on my car, plus content and property insurance for my home.
  All average between $100-$200 each, so $500 is a reasonable estimate.

The system has made it impossible to live alone. You pretty much have to pair up with someone and split finances, whether that's a romantic partner or a roommate or whatever. You have to be absolutely killing it to be younger than 40 and living alone right now.
- American Capitalists: "Communism doesn't work."
  Also, American Capitalists: "Live in a large shared space, cook meals together, and maybe even do a little farming on the side to supplement your diet. Also, don't use the traditional professional trade system. Learn by doing! Become your own mechanic, have friends cut your own hair and do your own dentistry, home school your kids, and dig your own well for water. Basically, become a 1950s Maoist."

Thats the neat thing, you're not!

If anon is in the US, they can switch to a SAVE plan which would make their monthly payments zero and get the loan discharged after 20-25 years. It's not much, but it's something.
- Can you explain a bit more for us non-americans? You pay 0 and after 25 years it's written off? Why doesn't everybody do that then?
  
  You pay a percentage of your income, but 225% of the federal poverty guideline is subtracted from your income before the calculation is made. If you haven't paid off the loan within a certain timeframe (I believe 10 years if you have $12,000 in loans or less, 20 years if it's more but you didn't go to grad school, or 25 years otherwise) the loan is discharged, but you have to treat the discharged amount as taxable income for the year it's discharged. Also, if you make your monthly payment ($0 for anon), your loan doesn't accrue interest that month.

You pay whut on your student loans. You've been hosed Davy

Spend less on candles.

numbers don't check out
lists $2250 expenses.... 100 hours of work per month would cover it
I know they have other expenses, but they failed to list them and failed to make their point.
- 100 hours of work if the money is tax free (it's not). Taxes take about 40% of your gross income so on $23/hr hr can't afford the listed bills.
  
  By my estimation and IRS calculator, his tax liability is probably under 20%. Probably. This assumes about 15% is being taken out for healthcare and retirement however, so yeah, the net paycheck will be approximately 30-40% lower than gross.
  I'd estimate OP has $440 a month left over after all the list expenses.
  
  Nowhere in the USA will you be taxed 40% of your income, I’m amazed such a blatantly obvious statement is being so heavily upvoted

Kids keep going to college with the promise of making 400k/year, but normies don't get that. College is good and all but employers generally don't care which college you went to, or your major (if not directly related), what matters is who you became friends with in college, and who their parents/uncles are.
Better off studying something specific, vocational schools, trade schools. Learn something specific, either no or small loan
- employers generally don’t care which college you went to
  It's a little worse than that. College provides a useful socio-economic barrier for unethical employers. They can hide in plain sight by requiring a degree, knowing it's going to cull out a whole class of people. Working to keep college unaffordable may be another part in this strategy; they're pulling the ladder up at the same time. Parents and students overcommitting on loans are doing all they can to bash back against all this, even if they don't know it at the time.

You have nothing to lose, but your chains.
- I mean could lose the job, apartment, even their life. It's not a risk many are willing to take.
  
  I mean could lose the job
  So, chains
  
  Does a life like that worth living?

Stop buying avocado toast

One fixable issue is that people need to stop going to college if there is no monetary benefit to going.
But I agree the cost of living is too high which is directly due to government policies and control of the monetary system.
- My parents convinced 17 year old me that I would be stuck flipping burgers if I didn't go to college and get good grades. I went to college and got good grades. Now I can't get any job.
  
  The employment market is super tight right now. A year ago I was freshly graduated after returning to college and landed multiple interviews as well as fending off headhunters on about a weekly basis. I applied to 9 openings and got 6 calls to interview, and made it to the final round of interviews for 3 roles in a 1 month timeframe. Now I'm fighting just to get an interview for the purposes of interview experience and potentially jumping ship if the offer is right, and I'm getting ghosted by the couple of recruiters who have reached out in the last few months. A friend's boyfriend is job hunting after getting laid off from his last job and hasn't been able to land a job in months, and another friend landed a job with an insane commute after her position was suddenly no longer needed. Even my old boss who I see at community events regularly and has been begging me to come back and throwing comparatively generous offers out there hasn't brought it up in a few months. Shit's rough yo
- people need to stop going to college if there is no monetary benefit to going
  Setting aside the idea of going to college for personal enrichment and social development (really fucking important life skills that have long term but difficult to explicitly calculate monetary benefits), its very difficult to say whether a particular college degree in 2024 will pay dividends by 2044.
  I've seen more than a few people poo-poo English degrees, but when a college degree is functionally mandatory for any kind of corporate employment that's obviously not true. I've seen people laud STEM degrees, then go off and work in the Fivr mines for years earning less than they'd get in a mediocre Sales & Marketing gig (which you can score easily with any kind of BA). I've seen people talk up vocational training, but so much of that hinges on your employer and the state of the industry at any given moment (roofers and plumbers doing great in Houston right now, but that's because home owners' insurance hasn't completely abandoned the state yet).
  It's all a big fucking gamble.
  
  I initially tried the "no degree" route and quickly observed the very low ceiling to what I could earn without a degree while working the white collar jobs that I'm good at, as well as how difficult climbing the ladder beyond that is. The pay bump and quality of work benefit from just a 2 year degree has been incredible
  
  It is a risk to some extent, but much of what college is is a way to figure out who can do what job. A STEM degree is good in that people will know that you have some level of technical skill. I think the main thing is that unless you have a direct way to monetize a degree, its not worth spending years of your life and going into debt on a risk. I personally have an engineering and a science degree that I used for a while, but now I have a construction company and would have been better suited starting in construction.

400$ for groceries per month for a single person sounds surprisingly high, especially if they're trying to live frugally.
- Have you bought food recently? I guess I live in area where the only thing that grows well is corn so anything fresh has to be freighted here but man good food ain't cheap and cheap food ain't good.
  
  Yes I've bought food recently. I don't sustain myself with just air based diet, at least not yet.
- I feed a family of 4 on close to $300 a month (but I budget $400/mo) a single person can absolutely do better than $400/mo
  
  Looking at the votes I think many disagree. I was assuming the person in OP was American and compared to where I live food is a lot cheaper there. Maybe there's something I'm not understanding how American grocery budgets work.
- "Groceries"
  Not all thats green is lettuce.
  
  The devil's lettuce will bloat up your snack budget. Might even waste money on candles and an Indian themed wall flag of some sort. Terrible for the budget.

23/hr at full time work (40 hrs/week) is $920/week.
Let's assume that 15% is taken out of each paycheck for taxes and withholdings and such, which leaves $782.
A typical month has 4 weeks, so $3128/month.
Stated expenses are $850+$1000+$400 totaling $2250
$3128-$2250=$878
bruh, if you're not making it with that kind of money, you need to take a serious look at your finances and cut back on things you don't need.
EDIT: I'm not replying to everyone.
There are several expenses that would be expected that were not covered. Those should easily fit inside the $878 monthly fund. I'm not going to go through item by item because they weren't mentioned by OP and everyone will have a different list. The things I'd put on the list absolutely fit, with plenty to spare.
The tax rate is based on my personal experience of being poor in Texas. This was a bit of an asspull, but I did math last year that determined I was losing 13% of my paycheck to taxes and withholdings, and I make a bit less than OP so I bumped it up a couple percent. Texas does not have state income tax, so if that number sounds low that's probably why.
Ultimately, I stand by what I said.
- Expenses a normal person would likely have that aren’t mentioned:
  car related expenses
  utilities, if not covered by rent (especially a cheap apartment is unlikely to cover all the utilities
  any needed insurance not covered by job
  savings
  less frequent necessities (clothes, tools, repairs, medical expenses)
  ideally a little money for something enjoyable every once in a while
  
  Plus what lawless hellscape is 15% for taxes and withholdings? In Ontario you’re paying 20% for taxes alone at the absolute minimum. That’s not including CPP, EI, and anything else you have like benefits co-pay or union dues.
  
  OP didn't mention a car, unless they live in an area where it is somehow required, they might just go without one for now
- I don't understand why this has so many down votes, it's correct! To have $878 available monthly I'd need to move back in with my mom (aka free rent and occasionally food too). And I'm a junior softer dev, easily among the higher paying jobs for starters. That's some killer money if you got your own place on top, also spending 400 on food? Holy sheep shit.
  
  It’s not even slightly correct.
  Estimate of taxes & withholdings is way too low. Maybe some states have such a low tax rate, but most places do not. In addition, withholdings are usually much higher.
  There are tons of expenses not itemized that you can assume most people will have. Phone, internet, utilities, renters insurance, health insurance, car payments, gas, car insurance, parking, transit tickets, bank account, etc.
  Also doesn’t account for an emergency fund, savings of any kind or anything other than hand to mouth.
  Then there’s stuff you need to keep your job & apartment. Cleaning supplies, soap, deodorant, shampoo, laundry soap, dryer sheets, garbage/recycling/compost bags, clothes, shoes, haircuts etc.
  God forbid you have any sort of uncovered medical expenses. Birth control, OTC drugs of any kind, glasses/contacts, supplements for some kind of nutrient deficiency, dispensing fees for prescription drugs, etc.
  Why do people insist on dragging each other down like this, like some billionaire is going to be impressed with how long they were able to live off a sack of rice and beans.
  It costs nothing to support each other.
  
  it's because it's not taking into account any other expenses, phone, internet, utilities etc.
  Spending 75-100 a week for a person in groceries is pretty normal in my experience. Before COVID I was spending 50-60 a week but those days are over. .

$23/hr x 40 hours = $920/wk
$920 x 52 weeks per year = $47,840 per year, gross.
government takes ~25% in taxes leaving you with net $35,880
rent is $850 x 12 months = $10,200
$35,880 - $10,200 = $25,680
student loans $1000/mo x 12 months = $12,000
$25,680 - $12,000 = $13,680
groceries $400 x 12 months = $4,800 $13,680 - $4,800 = $8,880 to spare.
Your annual budget has a surplus of $8,880
Divided over 12 months, you have an allowance of $740 per month.
Honestly you have it better than most people.
Furthermore you don't need $400 in food each month.
Food is stupid anyway; Most Americans are overweight, so you can probably get by on less.
If carbohydrates have not yet been made toxic to your biochemistry via your metabolism being turbofucked to hell by sugar and empty starch, you could pull the red beans and rice plus basic spice hack for staple nutrition. Literally just big fucking bags of dry brown rice and dried red beans.
I see dried red beans and dry brown rice coming in around $1 per lb, and that's DRIED remember - after you soak them and cook them you're getting multiple pounds of food per dollar. You could get your grocery budget down to $100 per month if this is your base-load calorie source per meal and you decide to spruce things up every so often with a dollar here and a dollar there.
- Beans and rice are a cheap way to eat but people shouldn't have to live on that...especially with a college degree.
  The list doesn't include utilities, phone, basic household supplies, nor any sort of healthcare/medicines (USA! USA!). You also didn't take out health insurance from the checks. A few years ago I was making about 55k and my biweekly checks were a lot closer to $1300 than $1840.
  
  Yeah, the comment you're responding to is dumb. What about savings? Transportation? How are they supposed to afford cookware and other kitchen appliances since they have just graduated and probably have very few possessions? It's silly.
  The student loans do seem high though!
- What about being happy for this money? Can you have a fulfilling life for 740 bucks a month? What if you subtract bills from it first? What if you subtract transportation costs, seasonal clothing, repairs, medical bills? Can you feel happy if you worked your ass off to get a good job in your field only to have to eat beans and rice and have fun for free or at home?
  
  Seasonal clothing?
- Looool work 40/52, shut up and eat ur beans, bitch
  Seriously, in the face of technological efficiency of the 21st century your answer to that life-situation is smth smth carbohydrates?
- Utilities? (ie water, power, trash)
  
  Phone. Internet. I guess you could always attach your ethernet strait into the red beans and rice.
  Car payment..
  Insurance...
  Gas..

Maybe you should have had some forward looking into what a career would pay before investing that much into college. Hell I made more than that in my entry level job more than 15 years ago.
- Jesus titty fucking Christ dude. People should be able to afford to shelter and feed themselves on any one job. I don't care if you're a fry cook or a neurosurgeon, everyone deserves to live with dignity and in reasonable comfort. No one cares how it was 15 years ago when you were entering the workforce. We care how it is now, where unless you won the parent lottery, you're probably gonna need two jobs out of college if you want to actually support yourself.
  
  Also, 15 years ago entry level work was 7-10 dollars an hour. Dude walked into a "skilled" job and confused it for "entry level". Which is also a bullshit euphemism meant to keep us from realizing that many people will never leave that level of work. It's literally impossible for everyone to move up because there's fewer jobs in each level going up.
  
  At the risk of defending the guy with the bad take, op can afford shelter and food. Op can't afford shelter and food and 1000 dollars of loan payments per month.
- Let's follow your train of thought here.
  Everyone makes the "smart" choice of looking into their career, and determine it based on the pay scale.
  Now we have a dearth of people doing the jobs with low pay, but still crucial to our society.
  Do you think there exists a demand for everyone to enter into the higher paying work force?
  
  See this is the problem, you're entirely missing the point. You don't have to go to Harvard to be an elementary school teacher. Harvard on average $228k for 4 years Bridgewater State $44k for 4 years. Only 35 miles apart.
  This person chose to take out somewhere on the realm of $90k worth of student loans for a career that makes less than $50k per year.
  I don't know anything about it, but we an example out of state tuition at Fayetteville State University is less than $25k for 4 years.
  There are options and choices but people would rather take the easy way and blame someone else.
  I agree college prices are out of control, but right now you have to work within the constraints available.
- Yup that's the right take. It's the literal kids who are being told they must go to college who are at fault. It's definitely not the system, not the adults counseling them about their future, and certainly not the businesses whose only purpose is aggregating wealth for a select few.
  As always blame the victim and walk away. Might as well piss on it to show your dominance.
  
  That's the right take. Take zero responsibility for your own actions and blame everyone else instead.
- Just because college doesn't have an instant payoff doesn't mean it never has a payoff.
- Don't have kids

Fook that's a lot of money. I was married with kids making $15/hr and we were fine. It's about getting good deals, having no debt, driving old cars you fix yourself, and not blowing money on frivalous crap like Starbucks, food delivery, and endless subscriptions to modern bullshit like media services. You kids waste so much these days expecting to be able to spend nickles and dimes everywhere (screw these new business models that bleed you dry with constant payments).
If you can't live on $50k/yr something is wrong with the choices you're making.
- You old farts don't understand the mess of a world you left behind for next generations. You had everything, lived in a golden age, then fucked everything over, from the economy to ecology. And when faced with hard facts, you rather blame the generation that had exactly no input in the matter rather than look inwards.
  You'd collapse faster than the wtc towers on 9/11 if you were in their situation.
- Lol, did you not read their expenses? 23*40*52=47840/12=3986.66*(8/10)=3189.33 Say taxes and such only 20%, likely more if they have any health insurance. 1850 out with rent & student loans.Take away the food 400. Leaves for electric (150), water (25), trash(10), car note(300), gas(150), maintenance (30), car insurance (180) Netflix(15) Internet (40) prepaid phone (20)
  Leaving $19.33, assuming I didn't miss any reasonable expenses. Good luck saving up for anything or cutting down expenses, maybe return to a the college diet of ramen til you can pay off the car, if not indefinitely. 1 unexpected expense away from disaster.
  E: Fixed the number formatting, ty!
  
  23*40*52=47840/12=3986.66*(8/10)=3189.33
  Here.
  
  Drop the Netflix and hit the high seas mate.

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