This is what can happen when you go from broke to rolling after graduating college and picking up a salary. I had no budget to speak of over the past year. My bills were paid as soon as I got them, but beyond that everything was discretionary. The result of such fiscal promiscuity isn’t entirely pretty. I give you the ‘09 Expense Review.
Cost of Surviving
Below are my necessary expenses to maintain my independence. They do not include healthcare/health insurance costs yet. I will try to update the table if I can get good numbers for those. Also, the rent and utility figures are a bit off. My water/sewage/pest control bill is automatically tacked onto my rent every month. All totals are rounded up to the nearest dollar.
| Category | Total | Avg. Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Rent | $10,281 | $857 |
| Utilities | $3,041 | $254 |
| Groceries | $1,292 | $108 |
| Gasoline | $1,222 | $102 |
| Car Maintenance | $782 | $66 |
| Totals | $16,618 | $1,387 |
These are the costs of surviving comfortably in a Nashville suburb. I’ve lived in two places over the past year on the West and East sides. The majority of that time was spent on the West side in an apartment complex with significantly higher rent each month. Below is a breakdown by location. I included an extra $60 in the monthly utility cost for the East side because my security deposit on my cell phone bill was credited to my account recently. Consequently, I haven’t had a phone bill for the last three months. Also, the totals for the West side are simply the difference between my yearly estimates and those for the East side (I recently made the move).
| East | ||
|---|---|---|
| Category | Total | Avg. Monthly |
| Rent | $2,023 | $675 |
| Utilities | $707 | $236(+$60) |
| Groceries | $305 | $102 |
| Gasoline | $200 | $67 |
| Car Maintenance | $44 | $15 |
| Totals | $3,279 | $1155 |
| West | ||
|---|---|---|
| Category | Total | Avg. Monthly |
| Rent | $8,258 | $918 |
| Utilities | $2,334 | $260 |
| Groceries | $987 | $110 |
| Gasoline | $1022 | $114 |
| Car Maintenance | $738 | $82 |
| Totals | $13,339 | $1484 |
As you can see, between the two locations my monthly cost of surviving went down by $330. Most ($243) of that was a reduction in rent alone! Differences beyond the rent are more difficult to see because of missing data. For instance, I dropped down from Full Basic cable with DVR and HD packages and High Speed Internet from Comcast to Limited Basic (~20 channels) and High Speed Internet after my promotional rate ran out. These types of mid-field changes and up front discounts fudge the numbers quite a bit. There is still value to be gained though, as I can clearly see that I’ve reduced my necessary monthly expenses by moving. Now for the horror show.
Cost of Living
Over the course of the year I tried to keep things simple. If it wasn’t a bill, I called it Entertainment. However, that simple division didn’t seem wise once I decided to analyze where all of my entertainment money was going! At one point I checked my monthly entertainment expense to find that that it was more than my rent on the West side. Not a good situation with no savings or emergency fund! In light of this analytic difficulty, I decided to start splitting up my categorization. Below are the expense results preceding this reclassification effort. I will try to finish the effort and discuss the finer details of my extravagant spending at a later time.
| Category | Total | Avg. Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Entertainment | $5,291 | $441 |
| Dining Out | $1,620 | $135 |
| Decorating/Furniture | $1,284 | $107 |
| Miscellaneous | $2,949 | $246 |
| Totals | $11,144 | $929 |
Oh wait, my average for the year is more than my average rent on the West side! The one thing missing is my gifts/loans budget. That was a hefty $6511 this year. Calculating the percentage of income that I spent in each category will have to wait for the big non-essentials breakdown, because its a bit complicated by the fact that I increased my salary by about 25% halfway through the year. I can estimate a few things though. My total expenses for the year were $34,273. My Cost of Surviving was %48.5 of that. I spent another %32.5 on entertaining myself in various capacities. Then I gave away or loaned out the final %19.
Never let it be said that I am not a generous man.