Well, I received my first paycheck this past Thursday after relocating to Jacksonville, FL from Syracuse, NY. I was pretty pleased with that. It feels so odd to be so far away from everything I am used to, but I am starting to get settled in, in both my personal and professional life.
Living down here has been fairly cheap so far, I am renting out a room in a house for $550 a month, which includes utilities, and it is a pretty nice place with good roommates. I have been spending a lot less money lately, but I think that is because my girl and I split up after almost a year, when I moved down here. As such, I’ll probably save a considerable amount of money, especially since she had fairly poor spending habits by my standards. Still, It is hard to put a price on companionship.
While many of my costs have gone down, food expenses have gone down drastically(she loved to dine out), my entertainment costs have gone way up. I imagine that this is because I am spending a lot of time out and about, trying to meet new people, since I moved down here without knowing a soul.
I signed up for yodlee a few months ago and have just begun to realize the awesomness of it. Basically, it allows you do aggregate all your financial institutions into one easy to use site. For example, I have 3 bank accounts hooked up with it, two student loan account, and a line of credit, and two investment accounts. Having all this information consolidated into one location not only saves me a great deal of time and effort, but it also has forced me to keep a better eye on my finances.
I’m going to have an entire writeup on yodlee soon, but suffice to say, for the personal financier, it is quite the little wonder tool.
Anyway, here is a quick log of my finances at the moment, in terms of cash on hand and its various channels of distribution.
Checking: $3,332
Cash: $888
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Total: $4220
So right now in spendable money I have $4220. End of the month in coming and I need to set aside at least $1016 of that based on my earlier calculations.
(I like to set aside the whole thing right up front of every month, that way I just pretend like it never existed in the first place, and I budget around that fact, which definitely helps me personally to live just a little more frugally. )
Total: $4220
Expenses: $1016
Liquid: $3204
What this number is basically the amount at the current moment I have to spend as I see fit. I always always always, let this number dictate my spending. I make a lot of spending forecasts and budget plans, but those are just guidelines that I like to stick by to help me reach my goals. I spend according to the number up there labeled as “Liquid” so that if I do go way over my budget or spending plan, at the end of the day, everything is all paid off, and that number is just extra spending money. One thing I would like to include in this number very soon are my investments. The faster I get automatic investments set up, the better. This will allow me to incorporate most of my investments into the “just another bill” category, which is great.
Ok, so I have about $3200 left over right now after all my bills are paid for all of next month. That is pretty good for me since I haven’t even taken into account the money that will be coming in during that period (until the end of August). A quick look at the calender tells me I have paydays on the 3rd, the 17th, and the 31st. If I assume I won’t miss any days of work during those pay periods, more likely than not, that is another $6,111.80 I will have by the end of August. That number is what gets to me, after taxes and a 7% 401k contribution (That is currently unmatched). I make this contribution now, because I am on a contract assignment that is up in 6 months, at which time I’m going to roll over my 401k into my existing Roth IRA.
All said and done at the end of August I’ll have had $9,311.80. I imagine I’ll spend around $600-$700 of that over the month on food, entertainment, and the like, which is higher than my initial estimates, but we will see when I go through my purchases at that time. I like to keep around $1000-$1500 in my checking account at any given time, just in case. That gives me about one month of bills I can pay should the need arise. That leaves me with ~$7,000 after my expenses estimate of $700 and my $1,500 cushion. This remainder is what I will expected to be invested in before that time.
After all that, my end of August goal is to have an $8,000 addition to investments.
This is going to be a pretty difficult and lofty goal since it means pinching about $1,000 out of my estimated expenses one way or another, but if it weren’t difficult it wouldn’t be much of a goal anyway.
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