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Old 12-05-2013, 05:48 AM
 
1,636 posts, read 3,159,188 times
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Your car is too expensive and you should probably get a room mate.

If you want to change your situation, sell your car and drive something cheaper or live in a cheaper/smaller place.

I could make it on your salary easily by scaling back.

It is all subjective. It's all dollars in, dollars out. It's like losing weight. It's hard, but possible if you set your mind to it. People will always make excuses too (not that you are).

I'm not sure what your savings situation is like, but that should be a big priority of yours. You're still young, so you have lots of time, but this is the time where it counts the most to start socking away into retirement savings before big life events start happening, such as marriage, kids, death of a family member, getting ill, etc.

If you are really set on both the vehicle and the apartment, get a side job maybe once a week to supplement yourself. The holidays are coming up, and I'm sure you could find some seasonal work there, I see stuff on craigslist all the time for one-off labor or just general help jobs.
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Old 12-05-2013, 11:29 PM
 
Location: Here
2,754 posts, read 7,402,456 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by no cigar View Post
Pretty straight forward question. I'm a single 28 y/o male, no tie-downs except a $300/mo car pmt and usual bills phone/insurance/cable etc. I am anticipating overall cost of living to be high (rent ~ $1k) and am just a little worried about making it with a salary under $50k/year while trying to do things like save for retirement, house, and life's speed bumps. Thanks!
Yes.
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Old 12-06-2013, 01:04 AM
 
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Originally Posted by eastmemphisguy View Post
Almost nobody who makes $50k spends 15% on retirement or 25% on taxes. Both of those are wildly inflated.
I agree the taxes are definitely inflated.

As far as the retirement savings goes...it's probably true that not many save 15% at the 50K income level (and that's probably true even at higher income levels, too). But that's mostly because people don't want to...or they act shocked when they find they don't have that much "left over" at the end of the month. Almost no one has 15% "left over" at the end of the month. You budget your retirement savings FIRST and then you budget the rest of your consumption around it.

Despite the fact that they take out 14% for my pension, plus Medicare. (although we don't pay into SS), I save around 27% of my 47K salary for retirement (plus maybe another 5% in general cash savings). Oh, and I live in the high cost SF Bay Area. Guess I'm weird . But I do tire of hearing how impossible it is to save a decent chunk of one's salary for retirement.
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Old 12-06-2013, 02:40 AM
 
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It depends on where you live and how.
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