Again, long time no post. If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m terrible at keeping up with posting blogs regularly! But here I am again, with a few things to note, both for myself and you guys I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and/or holiday season!
First of all, general budget things: I’ve gotten really lazy about keeping track of things, and when I’m stressed I overspend, but I still have managed to keep things even. If I spend far too much in dining out, I tend to spend way under my limit in groceries. When I end up buying more clothes than intended, I seem to instinctively cut back on other extras—drinks, movies—that require money. Still, it shows that I still have room for improvement, both in creating realistic budgets and in fine-tuning my attitudes toward money.
Apartment: We now have a 5th roommate. It’s not something I’m totally thrilled about and it caused a lot of conflict because he’s a roommate’s fiancée, she didn’t really clear it with us, and we let him stay three weeks for free before they announced he wanted to stay full time—and they were confused when I said he needed to pay rent. We came to an agreement: he will pay us other three roommates (outside of his fiancée) $50 a month, which brings my rent down to $710 a month. I know I’ll have to hound him for it and I personally think he should pay more, but I decided the stress wasn’t worth it (I do love my roommates after all and have no issues with him, just how they dealt with that). And he’s doing a fair split of internet and utilities, and I’m going to work him into the chores/household supplies rotation. There’s some other stuff going on there as well—like a roommate leaving for six weeks so she won’t be paying internet or utilities then—but it’s all things I can deal with. This has certainly been a learning curve!
School Job: Next semester I’m working 10 hours a week, and my pay was raised to $10/hour, so that should be at about $200 every paycheck (and that’s not including the extra shifts and full days I’m required to work). They wanted me to do 15 hours a week but I couldn’t swing it with my four classes, thesis, and the club I run.
Home Job: I got a random bonus during October—$230.88! The company got a new investor and they gave a bonus based on usefulness and years worked. I’m not super useful, but I’ve been there four years. This went straight into savings My pay was raised here as well. I was previously at $8.50/hour (ew) and was preparing to argue for $9 when my state’s min. wage goes up on Jan. 1st. But I just checked my last pay stub and I’ve already been put at $9.50 (woohoo!).
Roth: Saving for my Roth IRA took a slight backseat when school started. I was unable to put as much into it each month as planned, so I was stuck at about $500. But all of my Christmas money ($300) went into it, so hopefully I can open a Vanguard account in January or February.
I think that’s it for general updates. All good things—now it’s just down to me ironing out how to save money in other areas.
End of 2014 Financial Updates
December 28th, 2014 at 08:21 pm
December 28th, 2014 at 09:00 pm 1419800429