re: Is This A Realistic Budget For Someone Living Off Of $2060 A Month

quote:

---

Here is a real budget for minimum wage with 2 jobs.

1st job 40 hours 750 a month.

2nd weekend job 20 hours 375 a month.

1,125 a month.

---

What's the point in even living if you have to work 2 jobs all day for 7 days a week. Just end it.

email me at my name @live.com , the code has part of my name in it

That's not bad.

Rowbear I would definitely work for uber or waitr before I worked a second job on the weekends.

1) If you are earning minimum wage, you get a roommate. Period. It splits your biggest costs in half.

2) Health insurance is not $20 a month. If it is, your deductible would be so high that you'd never reach it short of getting cancer and at that point you're fricked anyway.

3) If you are earning minimum wage, you don't finance a car. You find a beater for cheap. This also reduces your car insurance payment which will surely be more than $100 per month.

4) If you are earning minimum wage, odds are you don't have anything of value in your home, thus rendering the expense of renter's insurance pointless.

5) Cable/Phone at $100 per month is laughable, unless you are rolling with netflix only and a non smart phone with no data.

6) Electric seems high at $90 from what I'm assuming is one person

That budget is off in a lot of areas, but $2,060 per month take home pay is absolutely enough to be comfortable, especially if you have a roommate.

(no message)

quote:

---

If my math is correct, they would be in the 12% tax bracket (ignoring state) which would be ~$250 a month in taxes so that would eliminate the “savings” and drop free cash to $650 or $22 a day before food or gas.

---

Your math is incorrect... Standard deduction is $12k. They would get a deduction for health insurance and state taxes. Most of their income would be taxed in the 10% bracket... Probably would pay around $90/month in federal taxes.

The budget is actually not too unrealistic. You can get an unlimited phone plan from Cricket/Straight Talk for $40/mo. Internet would be another $50/month. If you live with a roommate, you are splitting some of the utilities and internet.

Food wasn't included as a line item, but the remaining total of $800 would handle food ($200/mo), clothing ($100/mo) and miscellaneous expenses.

And the person would be working closer to 1.5 jobs on minimum wage, which is not uncommon for salaried people to work 60 hours. If you work Mon-Saturday that is 10 hour days. Is it fun to work minimum wage? Negative... but it beats living in Uganda or Nepal, and you would have real money left over at the end of each month to actually save.

My monthly bills run me about 550. I spend maybe 1k a month on hunting/fishing/food/entertainment. the rest goes in to savings. I got laid off for 2 months a while back and other than my monthly bills i spent about 200 bucks. was actually a pretty good time. drove north with a couple cases of MREs and some whiskey and stayed in a tent for a while at a hippy commune

Obviously that’s shopped and not real.

I lived off of this exact amount when I was in Austin Texas.

This was about 10 years ago.

Rent = $650. Not a shite neighborhood but I had to commute

Car Insurance = $40

Phone = $40

Food = $200

Health Insurance = $45

Utilities = $110

Car was paid for with cash saved. Used car. $7,000.

At $24k/year that leaves you $915 per month or $229/week in disposable income to save or spend.