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TL, I have a serious problem. I'm a full time student and freelance musician. I make okay money but mostly live off of student loans until I finish my undergrad degree. I use $800 a month from student loans. $400 for rent, ~$100 for utilities, ~$100 for phone. The other $200 pays for food and gas for a month. I also have a ~$50 credit card bill. (Stupid freshman year stupidity.)
On occasion I'll get gigs. This week I made $700 but that's all I've made this month in gigs. I bought the new iPhone 4 cause my old one was dying and so I had $400 left. $200 is going to next months rent and such because my student loan money is now dry.
Somehow, I've spent the entire remaining $200 nickel-and-diming myself. I look back and say, man, I shouldn't have gotten that WoW subscription, I rarely ever play! I shouldn't have bought into full tilt, I was fucking around drunk with a friend and lost $45. I shouldn't have transferred servers with my wow character and spent $25. I should have bought food at the store and made it rather than spend $50 in fast food in the last two weeks.
But for some reason I've never been able to make the change, I always say I'm going to do better and I never manage it. I have to be able to keep money. Every month I end up at ~$0. Right now I have $4.13 in my bank account. (That's free, since I did set aside $200 for next months stuff, otherwise I won't be able to pay my bills. I have that responsibility...)
What advice would you offer me? Getting a job is a great idea in the summer but unfortunately I can't have a job during the school year. As a music performance major I literally do not have any time to work. I really need help and I don't know how to make this change.
  
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I feel that you're spending way lots on phone bill. Aren't unlimited plans supposed to be 99 dollars a month (without taxes I assume).
Why would you spend 300 dollars on an iphone when you could've bought a 50 dollar phone that was probably decently functional?
WoW you could do without, but it's more of a hobby than anything else and you deserve to give yourself free time. Spending the money on transferring is somewhat dumb though.
Betting is also dumb. What is the 50dollar CC bill for?
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switch your major unless you plan on being this way for the rest of your life. also, quit wow and don't buy new phones the day they come out.
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Solid advice for people in tight money situations: dont buy stupid shit like a fucking iphone. That may be a bit harshly worded, but i see so many kids i know complaining about money and they have a god damn iphone and 80gb ipod, and shiny new shit they dont need.
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iPhone isn't something I'm likely to ever give up... it's -way- too useful in my life, and yes, I do use it for pretty much every damn thing including paying my bills, managing gigs, keeping track of my calendar, I'd be professionally lost without it.
I also know what I can do without, it's a matter of getting rid of it and not getting back to it. $100 phone bill is unavoidable with the iPhone... unlimited texts, data plan, and the bare minimum talk time is $100. (Fuck AT&T.)
Barrin has the right of it. I don't need to be told what to change, I need help changing.
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Controlled spending. Don't indulge yourself. Every time you want to make a spontaneous spending decision (like eating out vs eating in, going out drinking, buying an iphone, etc), don't do it. Start a regiment and stick with it. Create a spreadsheet and meticulously keep track of income and expenses you have every week or month. If you see how much you blow indulging yourself on paper, you might give it a second thought.
Edit: lol at needing an iPhone. Try the original calendar tracker, an actual calendar + notepad/pen. You can text with a regular phone. You can keep track of you gigs with pencil and paper.
To put it in perspective, you spend 12.5% of your total income a month on your phone bill. Your iphone cost you an extra 2.5% of your annual budget. If an average wage person (40k/year) spent 15% of their annual budget on their phone, they'd be spending 500 bucks a month on it. Don't live beyond your means.
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On June 26 2010 15:23 gchan wrote:
Controlled spending. Don't indulge yourself. Every time you want to make a spontaneous spending decision (like eating out vs eating in, going out drinking, buying an iphone, etc), don't do it. Start a regiment and stick with it. Create a spreadsheet and meticulously keep track of income and expenses you have every week or month. If you see how much you blow indulging yourself on paper, you might give it a second thought.
Edit: lol at needing an iPhone. Try the original calendar tracker, an actual calendar + notepad/pen. You can text with a regular phone. You can keep track of you gigs with pencil and paper.
Yeah, no. You're wrong about the iPhone stuff. But I'm not gonna argue with you. It's simply not true. And using paper and pencil ANYTHING is so volatile. Easy to misplace, damage, leave at home when you need information now, it's just not sensible.
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There really isn't too much to say. Get a job, get rid of the phone, and stop blowing money on fast food and alcohol.
And needing the iphone is such fucking bullshit. People have been scheduling things for years without smartphones. Needing a cellphone I could understand, but not an iphone.
I have friends that go to school full time and work full time and they definitely make more then $700 a month.
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Buddy, you're nickel and diming in all the wrong places. Your largest liability every month is your rent, as it should be. Your second largest liability is your utilities, as it should be. That in total is 62.5% of your monthly expenses. Of the remaining 37.5% of discretionary income you spent 40% of it on...an iphone? And here I thought that food was important.
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Need help changing?
... there's an app for that.
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On June 26 2010 15:23 gchan wrote:
Controlled spending. Don't indulge yourself. Every time you want to make a spontaneous spending decision (like eating out vs eating in, going out drinking, buying an iphone, etc), don't do it. Start a regiment and stick with it. Create a spreadsheet and meticulously keep track of income and expenses you have every week or month. If you see how much you blow indulging yourself on paper, you might give it a second thought.
Edit: lol at needing an iPhone. Try the original calendar tracker, an actual calendar + notepad/pen. You can text with a regular phone. You can keep track of you gigs with pencil and paper.
To put it in perspective, you spend 12.5% of your total income a month on your phone bill. Your iphone cost you an extra 2.5% of your annual budget. If an average wage person (40k/year) spent 15% of their annual budget on their phone, they'd be spending 500 bucks a month on it. Don't live beyond your means.
You can setup an account at http://mint.com to pretty much keep track of all of this for you, assuming most of your purchases are using a debit/credit card rather than cash.
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On June 26 2010 15:20 Divinek wrote:
Solid advice for people in tight money situations: dont buy stupid shit like a fucking iphone. That may be a bit harshly worded, but i see so many kids i know complaining about money and they have a god damn iphone and 80gb ipod, and shiny new shit they dont need.
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On June 26 2010 15:33 Bosu wrote:
There really isn't too much to say. Get a job, get rid of the phone, and stop blowing money on fast food and alcohol.
And needing the iphone is such fucking bullshit. People have been scheduling things for years without smartphones. Needing a cellphone I could understand, but not an iphone.
I have friends that go to school full time and work full time and they definitely make more then $700 a month.
I'll ignore the bolded, didn't read the OP nonsense. But i will say that I have never in my life purchased alcohol =P I actually rarely drink but when I do it's not on my dime.
You're all.. wildly ignoring the point of this blog. I'm looking for your ideas and experiences with implementing solutions. I'm not looking for you to judge me based on what I do choose... I have clearly recognized what is stupid spending and what isn't. Whether you agree with me or not on that matter is irrelevant because you are not me and I am not you ^_^. Point is, I am asking for... solutions. Things I can do to help myself implement the changes I want to implement. Because it's obviously not as easy as saying, oh, just change it. If it was, everyone in the world would be a perfect spender.
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What the fuck do you want people to say. There are no other solutions.
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Buying that phone was a really big mistake. Not sure what your contract is like, but it's at least $25 a month for a data plan, right? (went back and read and it's $100 a month for the lowest level plan.) Plus whatever they're charging you for everything else, on top of dropping nearly a month's rent on a phone. Seriously, I can understand wanting to have nice things and buying into hype and all, but when you're really short on cash, the phone should be the first thing to go; not buying into an expensive plan with an expensive initial price. But there's not much you can do if you're under contract for two years, though I'd look to see how much the cancellation fee is.
Honestly, making this blog about being in a tight situation when you're spending $100 a month on a phone that you paid $300 for is just asking to be flamed. Unless you find a more consistent job that somehow works with your schedule, your best bet is to get rid of the phone or drop your other spending a bit. There's really nothing more to it.
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How did he not read the OP? Get a job for the summer then, christ.
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Okay, forget this blog, nobody seems to think before they post.
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Are you kidding? You think there is some magical solution that is just waiting there to be posted about how to not be a fucking idiot with what little money you have? STOP LIVING BEYOND YOUR MEANS, there is your solution.
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CA10830 Posts
even though you're going to ignore everyone's comments regarding your ridiculously stupid decision to get an iphone, i'll say it again to reinforce it.
having an iphone, or rather any sort of smartphone like a blackberry or droid in your financial situation is a SUPER dumb move. i seriously can't think of a legitimate reason to spend that percentage of your limited funds on a phone.
On June 26 2010 15:14 Eiserne wrote:
As a music performance major I literally do not have any time to work.
i call absolute 100% bullshit on this
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EPT
