Come this Sunday I will have been living in my new apartment for two full weeks. My best friend from college and I decided to get an apartment together after she was kicked out of her aunt's place. This is the first time in my whole life that I am truly living on my own. I did live in the dorms while attending Emporia State, but the dorm life is entirely different from living on one's own. When I started looking at college, I looked for ones that were not too close to home. One of the reasons (and there were many reasons behind doing so) was because I believed that it would prepare me for living on my own in the future. Well, it didn't, and I'll tell you why.
I think it will be best to start off by talking about the one thing that is important to survive in this world. Money. Sadly, if you're going to live on your own, or live at all, you need it. Now, college is not cheap. You have to pay for food service, classes, your books, and that's only naming a few expenses. Then, on top of all that, you have to worry about surviving in the dorm room. Stuff to decorate (if you want), self-cleaning supplies (shampoo, etc.), and such. That all ends up adding up. Well, there are three options for paying for college. You can either be lucky and have a really rich dad/mom and have him/her pay for your college degree, you can pay for it yourself, or you can get financial aid. Most people go with financial aid because they either do not have rich parents or cannot pay for it themselves. I went with financial aid. Luckily, financial aid covered all of my expenses and I even received money back from them. The wise choice to do with the money I received would be to take some for myself and place the rest of it in a savings account. However, I did not do this. Instead, I spent it faster than one can say "Bob's uncle married Jane's aunt" (though why one would say that is lost to me). That was my first mistake and lead to my second one. My second mistake was not finding a job. While I spent my time empty the cash out of my pockets I had no means of putting it back in. This meant that I dug myself a whole, and I dug it often. Because of my bad spending habit and not having a job to put money back in, I ended up having to have my dad bale me out quite often. Today I feel horrible about having done so so many times, but back then, all I cared about was having more money, and, obviously, not by means of me working. These two mistakes where what killed me the most about not being prepared for living on my own. Other minor mistakes (like going home for summer break which kept me dependent on my family and staying up late during school which makes getting up early for a job difficult) also effected me but not in such a high manor.
The reason not saving money was such a big mistake was because of instead of having money saved up so that I do not have to worry about bills until I have fully settled in, I am facing the challenge of getting bills paid on time. This is my first time ever having to worried about any form of bills. Waiting until I had a place of my own to take care of bills was also a big mistake. While going to college, I should have thought about taking one or two of my own bills (like phone and insurance). This would have taught me to budget my money and it also would have prepared me for when more bills arrived. Having not done that, I am now facing too much at once. Instead of having only two bills to worry about and being prepared for having bills, I now must pay seven different payments almost every month. This is where not having had a job while attending college comes into play. While attending college, I could have found a simple minimum wage job that would have provided me both with a little extra cash and experience. Because I decided not to find a job, I started job hunting with a small amount of experience during a time where the economy is rough and finding a job is almost nearly impossible. Amazingly I managed to find a well paying job. Now, this may seem like a bit of luck on my side, but that's where staying up late and sleeping in hit me hard. My job started at 5:30...in the morning. I had to be up by 3am every day in order to work a ten hour shift. I could have probably handled this job if, A. I had worked in the past four years, and B. If I had done a better job with my sleep schedule while in college. This job paid $9 an hour and I worked 40 hours a week (10 hours a day). There were only two problems with the job that made me hate it: the hours available (I'm talking about the time not the amount) and the lack of motivation I had to do it. I will be talking about motivation in another blog soon, but wanted to say that lack of motivation is never good to have while having a job. I came home miserable every day (which will be another blog topic (probably to go with the motivation)) and I decided to quit. I now have a new job that pays minimum wage and can only offer 20 hours a week (if that). Though the money is not high and the hours not quite enough, I am happy with this new job, but it is no where close to helping me pay bills.
To get an understanding of how horrible it is, I start by showing you the break down of my budget and then the break down of my last pay check. First off, the break down of my budget goes like this:
Bills:
Rent =
322.50/month
Electric = ?
Needs:
Gas =
~15/2 weeks = 30
Oil =
30/2-3 months
Food =
~50/2 weeks = 100
Phone/Insurance =
20/month
Internet
= 20/month
The main bills are Rent (including heating [water and trashed is paid for by apartment complex]) and Electric. I currently do not know what the electric will look like because it was just switched into our name and we won't be getting our first bill till the end of August. The main Needs are Gas: The amount I usually place in my tank is $15, which gives me half a tank full. If I do not go very far, I can run on half a tank for two weeks, so I'll be roughly paying $30 each month on gas., Oil Change: My truck's oil must be changed every 2-3 months depending on how much and how far I drive. Back at home a basic oil change cost around $30. I have not decided where to get my oil change at my new location and do not know how much it will cost yet, but I am hoping it will not be much higher than $30., Food: My roommate and I had decided that we will each pay half the cost for food. This has not happened yet due to neither of us having money at the same time as the other one. When we finally start splinting the cost, my hope is to not go much over $50 for both of us, which will equal out to $100 dollars a month., Phone/Insurance: Talking to my dad, he is either deciding to have me pay him for my part of the phone bill or having me pay for my insurance. Either way, it will equal out to $20 a month., Internet: My roommate gets internet through her phone company for $50 a month. Since she is allowing me to use her internet, she has said that I should pay $20 a month for my share. The total of this entire budget equals out to $522.50 each month I pay for everything.
Now for the break down of my last paycheck.
Paycheck: $111.70 ($108.70 after being cashed at Wal-Mart because I do not have a bank account at my new location yet and had no way of sending the check down to where my other bank account is).
Food: ~$59
Gas (+ energy drink): ~$18
Total Left Over: $36.29
That was my paycheck for my first job (the 10 hours a day one). My current job is paying $7.25/hr and I've worked (and will only work) a total of 6 hours today. I have yet to find out my schedule for next week and only have three weeks left to make at least $322.50. Now, lets do some math. If I work a full 20 hours in one week with a payment of $7.25 an hour, I end up making $145 a week. Now, I get paid every two weeks so I'm roughly making $290 every two weeks. There are roughly four weeks per month which means I'll be making $580 a month. Now, we subtract the lovely amount of $522.50 for a full month of all bills, I am left with $57.50. This is before I even know what my electricity is and before taxes are removed. As you can tell, I am in a tight spot and now must figure out a way to survive living on my own.
Now, I don't know if my point has come clearly across (I get lost in my long blogs), but I want you to know a couple of things from this blog. To under the first, I must share something my boyfriend once told me: "Never regret something you have done, for if you do, you will always be stuck making the same mistake over and over again." (or something like that). The reason I am sharing that is because I want you to know that this blog is not about me regretting the mistakes I made in college, but instead, I wrote this blog for two reasons. The first being that I wanted to get the feeling of dread these bills are causing me off my chest and secondly, I want to help you. I don't know if you're facing the same problems I am right now, or if you haven't even started to come close to being on your own, but what I wish is that you will learn from my mistakes if you haven't gotten out on your own yet. My dad tried to warn me about what it would be like out on my own and he tried to help me prepare for it, but I was naive and didn't take heed in what he was telling me. I hope that you instead are able to walk away from having read this blog with a sense of what to do that will help you when you begin living on your own, but I also hope that you think carefully about every major decision that comes your way. I have a habit of not doing so and I find that not doing so causes more harm than good.
With all my Love <3
S.L.u.G.
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