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How should I spend my paychecks?
Dread Pirate Arbuthnot
OMG WRIGGLYT O X O P L A S M O S I SRegistered User regular
OMG WRIGGLYT O X O P L A S M O S I SRegistered User regular
So I have a practically full time job this summer, and I get paid twice a month. The only expenses I have right now are $80 at the end of the month for a personal trainer I'm seeing at the gym. I currently have $450 in the bank and am getting another paycheck next week. Should I do...
Option 1: The cute option. My mother told me that if I saved $1000, we would buy a kitten or puppy. The $1000 would be saved for medical expenses, vet emergencies, spaying/neutering, etc. The drawback is right now our housing situation is unsure and my mother would want to wait and see whats happening - this could take a while.
Option 2: The fun option. Buy a 360, Live, GTA 4 OR buy a bunch of Wii games OR buy a PS3 and MGS4.
Option 3: The responsible option. Put everything in the bank and save for school.
Option 1: The cute option. My mother told me that if I saved $1000, we would buy a kitten or puppy. The $1000 would be saved for medical expenses, vet emergencies, spaying/neutering, etc. The drawback is right now our housing situation is unsure and my mother would want to wait and see whats happening - this could take a while.
Option 2: The fun option. Buy a 360, Live, GTA 4 OR buy a bunch of Wii games OR buy a PS3 and MGS4.
Option 3: The responsible option. Put everything in the bank and save for school.
Dread Pirate Arbuthnot on
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And don't buy a pet until you get a permanent housing status; that's not fair to get a puppy and then oops! you have to get rid of it because your new place won't allow it/can't afford it.
Plus having just the one game means you play it all the way through, find all the secrets, and thoroughly enjoy it, rather than think "I can't be bothered to play half of these", which would be a waste of money.
So it's win-win!
I'm seventeen, I have one more year of high school left, and other than the gym fees I have no expenses.
Seconded. Buy a game or two, but don't blow it all. Spending everything you earn all the time is a bad habit to develop.
So, not the PS3, then.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Save it. If you're looking to do any sort of post-secondary education, it's gonna cost you a lot. I mean, just check the D&D thread about parents paying for their kid's education. I'm probably the wrong person to give advice though as I am super frugal. I don't think that my expenses have ever consistently approached more than $100 a month, in my ENTIRE life.
That way you will feel like you got a lot of enjoyment out of your windfall, but won't actually have spent much of it.
This is bad how?
You spend 80 bucks in a "personal trainer" eveyr month while on the stage of making bets with your mom about buying a puppy?
I take it you're american (since you need to "save for school" instead of getting it for free), so saving the money is probably the way to compensate for your screwed up social security system.
But hey, you might be able to get one of the Option 2s and still end up with some cash saved in the bank. If you go for used goods you might be able to get a 360 or PS3 bundle for way under 400 bucks.
Also, the USA-bashing is both needless and inappropriate, and what does the social security system have to do with a 17-year old?
Could've saved myself the trouble and made that last summer more worthwhile. Save it.
T-Nation blog
If you save it all, you'll regret not having fun. If you spend it all, you'll kick yourself later.
Its what I'm doing this summer. Some of my income is being saved for moving/furnishing the new apt. The rest is spent on games/comics/alcohol.
Save it or invest it. In fact it, might even been good to start an IRA account or something like Share builder.
When I was young, I blew a LOT of money on stuff I didn't need. I wish I would of saved or invested it. People told me "You should save some of that money", but I didn't listen to them. But that is the advice I have now; is to save and/or invest it. It's a good habbit to get into.
It doesn't have to be all of it. Even if you start off saving say 10 or 20% and spend the rest how ever you want you'll thank yourself 30 years from now. Just a little bit per pay check will turn into a lot years from now when your looking to buy a house, retire or a hundred other expenses you'll be responsible for.
EDIT: Also there is a lot cheaper ways to get a puppy if that is your heart's content. There are many dog pounds across the country that would GALDLY give you a dog so that they don't have to put it down.
He did, he literally said his only expense wsa 80 bucks at the end of the month for a personal trainer he's seeing. I take that to mean that's his one steady expense, or he'd be asking what he should do with all the money, not the money he has left after training.
And this is a problem I find every now and then. I don't mean to do any USA-Bashing, but I was making an honest point. You guys need to borrow money from banks to study and spend a shitload of cash in health-related stuff, so my advice to a 17 years old kid in the US who wants a higher education isn't the same I'd give to a British kid.
UK kid? Go crazy, spend your money on consoles and booze and girls and having fun. After all, you're 17.
US kid? Save it. If you're gonna need 6K a year just to stay in college and nobody else is paying for it you're gonna need every penny.
It's just the way things are. My whole education costed as much as one year on the average US university and I get free health care and several months with nearly full pay if I have to be unemployed for a while after college. If I didn't have all that state support I wouldn't have spent my money the way I did.
Yes, I do think the way the US handles social security is insane and broken, but that's not USA bashing, it's a well grounded opinion. I have nothing against the people, I just think they've chosen a very strange way to handle quite a few of their issues.
OK, yeah don't listen to this.
You're going to need the $$ for books and shit in college, I say treat yourself to something $100 or less and save the rest. Why get a new pet if you're going to leave in a year?
Trust me, spending money will get very tight in college and likely when your first starting out in the workforce. And those are also the times you will want to have a little cash so you can socialize.
I've always been a saver. I don't like spending my money. But I have splurged. Saving for years allowed me to go on a trip of a lifetime with my girlfriend and still have enough money when I got back. If I hadn't been saving for years before I even met my girlfriend I might not have gone.
When I first got my full time job with (At the time) seemed like $TEXAS paycheck every two weeks, I went on a buying game streak. I think I bought like 12 games in a month. Know how many I finished? 2 of them.
4 of them were still in the initial wrapper, and the rest I just played 1/2 of it or so.
See, the one thing that then clicked for me was.. Now I have a full time job, I do not have the free time like I used to.
It sucks, when you are young you have almost all the free time in the world but barely any disposable money.. Then when you get older you have a lot more disposable income but not very much free time
So now, I put about 1/2 the money I earn in the bank account, and the rest pays off my bills. I will buy one game a month as a 'treat' but even one a month is almost too much for me, it should be one every two months.. (Actually, I dont even buy the games, I use goozex so I get most of the games for free)
I have been working for 1.5 years and now have $30,000 saved in my bank. I make about $90 a month off of interest. I do currently live at home which what allowed me to save so much (I do pay $300 a month for rent.. but that is cheap compared to living in an apartment)
And in a couple years when I may be interested in buying a house, I will be able to put down a significant down payment.
So I always suggest the saving route, but to also treat yourself once in a while.
I bought a 42" LCD TV for myself, along with an xbox and surround sound... That was a fair bit of money, but my rational is that if I move out I would need to purchase the TV anyways. I got an amazing deal on all the 3 electronics since I bought them all at the same time at the same place.. I basically got the xbox for free from the amount they took off from the TV and sound.
My point stands. My 5 years degree didn't reach 5.000 $ total. If you need 5K a year, save all you can from your summer jobs.
I'm glad she (sorry about that) is Canadian, in fact. Proves it wasn't some anti US thing, just advice depending on the cost of things wherever she lives. I so not clichéd to complaing about Canada's lack of government help.
I'd certainly be surprised if a puppy cost 1.000 bucks from the get-go. I mean, I can certainly see how food and medical care could build up to that figure over a decade, but other than proving that she's responsible enough there's no need to have saved that much cash up front, right?
I'm not a fan of puppies on enclosed spaces, though, so maybe she should wait and see if and where they're moving to before she decides to get a dog. After all, saving the money for three months and saving it for a longer period of time isn't a huge difference.
Spend a little bit on something you'd really like so you don't feel as if you're working for nothing, which can happen when all your money goes to bills and/or savings. A puppy, cute as he might be, doesn't sound ideal for your living or financial situation right now.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
Put the money into some kind of account. I don't know how financing goes for most people in CA and I can't look atm. However, even if you don't need the money for school reasons, being able to save while still enjoying part of your hard earned money is a lesson that I wish I'd learned when I was 17.
I'm 26 now and still paying off school debt (it is almost gone now though yay!) because I was stupid and blew all my money i made in highschool and my summers.
The sooner you start saving the money you earn, the sooner you'll get to enjoy the really big payoffs in life.