Well, I'm broke.

Yup, I bought the car. A nice buggy. The problem is, I now have just enough cash for NDK, and books and thats it. No more pennys. And I'm SERIOUSLY gonna have to save up during this school year. I think with my current lifestyle I've actually been making about $2000 less than I'm spending annually. What this means is that without an adjustment to my fiscal practices, I'm going to either find a way to work more hours, or risk having to skip a semester in order to build up funds. However, both cases are not likely to be reasonable, so the obvious fall back comes into mind: Adjusting my spending habits.

I guess that means that I should actualluy work out a full fledged budget and stick to it. It's going to be rough, but I think that with a $20,000 a year income while living at home, I shouldn't have this much trouble keeping in the black. So I guess it's time to work out the specifics. Now the fact that I'm spending $3000 a semester on books, tuitions, and fees doesn't help. I mean that's $14,000 a year for food, entertainment, supplies, and transportation (Which costs me about $40 a month, $480 annually.)

I purchase 2 meals a day on average mon-fri, 1 on sunday, and 7 meals on saturday (Accounting for other people I buy food for. Since I make the most money of the group, I like to take them out to eat for dinner on saturdays to help spread the wealth.) At $6 a meal that's 6*(2*5+1+7) or 6*18 or $102 a week. That's an additional 408 dollars a month or $5300 annually, so I'm up to $11,780 annually. For supplies for school I spend about $500 a semester (Including clothes, pencils, paper, etc) for $1000 annually, so I'm up to $12,780 annually for all of the other things. This suggests then that I spend about $7000 annually on entertainment. When you consider that I replace either my desktop system or my laptop each year (Spending $1000 for a desktop or $2000 for a laptop) we can account for alot of it. Add the cost of video games and MMORPG subscriptions (currently about $15 a month) and we come to another $1000+ a year. That suggests that my "splurge" budget is running about $4000 a year for things like video cameras, anime, RC cars and the like.

Hmm... I think that the best road for me to take would be to calculate my exact monthly nessicary expenditures (food, transportation, supplies, and MMORPG subscriptions) and then work out how much money I should spend on junk monthly, then calculate how much more I make than that during summer and winter break and see if I'm making enough money to catch up during these times. I actually think that I am, I just have to have more self restraint.

We'll see. ^^




- posted by Jim The Cactus @ 8/11/2004 10:21:57 AM | Permalink | (4) Comments. Add your own!