Budgeting $70k per year - monthly expenses?

$900 for a car? What the hell are you getting a Range Rover? You can get intro beamers for around $400. Get a 3 or 4 bedroom and share with a bunch of guys. Not worth paying that much when you'll never see the place.

I wanted to get something in the $30-40k range. According to this calculator:

http://www.carfinance.com/auto-loan-calculator/monthly-payment-auto-loa…

A 48-mo loan with 5% APR on $40k will be $921. How could I possibly buy an intro beamer for $400/mo?

Look into leasing, you can get something good for

Why on earth are you looking to purchase (or lease) something close to $40k?

Lease a freakin hyundai for dirt cheap, have a comfortable car, and have money to save or blow when you need. 0 purpose in spending anything more on a car, especially when you calculate only saving $200 bucks/month

go for a used car in the mid-20s if you want a nice BMW or similar. i made the mistake of leasing a BMW - dont get me wrong it was awesome - but when I had a job offer come up 2 years into a 3 year lease, I had to give up the car and pay a HUGE fee to get out of the lease. buying used gets you a very similar car with less of the feeling you're just throwing money in a pit.

Youre in finance and can't budget your monthly expenses?

Supporting mother+ Spending $1K/month on a car makes about as much sense as:

"$8000/month on Pyrex, but I don't smoke any crack at all"

drop the car loan expense, in LA budget for like 300-400 in gas. (Source: I lived there)

Get a reasonable car/good gas mileage driving and you can drop the gas a bit, but remember driving in LA blows: http://www.tiptonhonda.com/ppc/Honda/Civic%20Sedan/?gclid=CLTdoP-qjqwCF…

Cloths will most likely be lump sum one time costs not month to month, Bump up your food, like double.

dont lease a car please, just buy a used accord or something esp in this economy. but yeah you will def. need a car in l.a.

Buy your car used. And spend $5-7K on it.

You need to be saving something for retirement. I would cut back on eating out to $15/plate restaurants like the Olive Garden and Chili's where most folks who earn $60K/year eat. And do it only once a week. Maybe PF Chang's for a special occasion.

I understand you love your mother very much so I'm not going to touch that. But you do need to be saving 10-15% of your income for retirement before bonuses.

Your salary is designed to let you retire at 67; your bonuses are designed to let you retire sooner.

1) Leasing is dumb 2) I'll buy a nice car if I want - I'll be paid a stub bonus in January, I can save that. 3) Can you guys just help me think of what expenses I'd need on top of what I listed?

I'll be living really close to work (

I doubt you'll actually save that bonus if you think spending $1,000 a month on your car(equivalent to how much you're spending on your apartment) on 70K+bonus is a good idea. You'll just end up living paycheck to paycheck like all the rest of these suckers trying to impress people who know that 70K really isn't al ot of money!

You NEED to read a financial literacy book. A pretty simple read that I'd suggest is "rich dad poor dad". I can tell you're young so it should be simple enough for you to understand.

FYI: taking a jab at Illiniprogrammer was unnecessary considering YOU asked for people's input about YOUR finances. Trying to budget is a step in the right direction but people budget to save not budget to spend! You should take his advice. SAVE SAVE SAVE so you can INVEST INVEST INVEST. When you start to invest you'll realize that your 80K(salary+bonus) isn't a lot of money especially if you plan on blowing 1K a month for your car.

steps of soapbox

I think you should aim to save at least 20% of your take home pay. Which means that you need to find a way to make your budget work in 3200 per month. I don't think it should be too difficult if you're single. Definitely don't buy a 40K car. No way your insurance will only be 100 per month. I'd say more like 250-300 considering you're male and under 25.

I don't consider it a jab. It's OP's money and OP's credit and OP's retirement. He can buy a $40K car if he can find someone to lend him money, but if you can't save 10-15% of your salary for retirement, it's not a smart move.

Retirement is a genuine need- there will come a day that you will outlive your ability to work. But a nice car is a want. Maybe a good compromise is for OP to save 15% of his salary for retirement and spend his bonus on nice car.

Housing: $1k sounds about right, but may be a little more than what you'll actually end up spending Utilities: If you're splitting it I would figure for roughly $80-100 Car: Change to $450 per month + more like $190-225 per month insurance + $250-300 per month in gas Get a certified pre-owned Acura or Honda which will probably have a special rate and they have special programs for recent grads. Finance for 60 months not 48 and that will allow you to buy a low $20k range car that will save you on gas and insurance as well. Phone, TV, internet: $120 per month Clothes: $100 per month-either you're buying a few items from old navy each month or 1-2 items from a decent place on that budget. That doesn't sound realistic based on the other items you wanted to overspend on. Support my mom: $500 per month- who has been supporting her the entire time you've been going to school? Food: $15/day on average = $450 per month Misc costs + going out: $600 per month- this needs to be increased. You're allowing $150 per week for misc/going out and that's not enough especially if you take into account that you haven't factored in groceries yet.

This is just my two cents, but I think you definitely need to trim some of the fat off of your budget. You're going to be busy enough for your first couple of years at work. The last thing you need is to be strapped for cash and constantly dealing with the issues that can arise from that situation.

Uhh if I spend $4k per month, I'd be saving waaay more than 25% of my salary. $60k bonus?

troll...

You guys ruined it! Trolls don't bug me and the one thing that's guaranteed to drive them crazy is a thread-jack to talk about rusty Hondas. Besides, this is the only game in town for me to advocate thrift at this point.

Upon reading the $900 car payment budget item I thought to myself "IP will shortly be championing the glory of used hondas." True to form...

You work hard now so you can tell yourself you will have time to do what you love in 20 years.

The last thing you want to do is be 60 years old and still having to punch a clock every morning. With stocks being at their cheapest in terms of earnings and dividends (excluding 2009) since the late '80s, there have been worse times to be a 20-something saver.

1 Billion people have been born in the past 12 years. That's faster than any time in earth's history. And the job market is still having trouble absorbing the billion born between 1987 and 1999. Somewhere in that billion are people who are more driven, smarter, and harder-working than you. So you want to have a lot of money saved up so that when your pay goes down based on supply/demand of labor, the resources you own are going up in value to make up for it.

Actually the goal is that we'll have the same at 60. But I'll be retired with my 40 acre farm on Lake Michigan at 45.

Looks like plots of cropland are up for sale on Washington Island. For those who don't know, Washington Island is the Martha's Vineyard of Chicago- just in an IlliniProgrammer kinda way. Instead of folks driving around with Jaguars and Beemers, you see a lot of rusty 30-year old F150s. There's also the Albatross Drive-in that sells burgers for $1.50 and shakes for $2.

IP, I am amazed at your patience. When he started talking about not knowing a $60k bonus, I would have flipped shit on his ass. Solid advice, though I must ask: what kind of terrible things did you do to the Honda to get it rusty so fast... or maybe we don't want to know?

Actually back when I had a car it was a '91 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. There were a couple rust stains, but that was from the previous owner. I will probably buy a used Mustang (ideally one of the newer 30 mpg models) if I wind up needing a car again.

And I really don't believe that leasing a car is a bad move---if you do it the right way....

Jumping into this thread to tell future college grads to forego purchasing a $40K car. What a dumb fucking move.

Save your money dummy. In this economy at the LA office, you're going to be lucky if your group even exists in a year.

Random question I genuinely dont know the answer to. In the US what kinda mileage do you guys get from your cars, allocating $200-300 per month for fuel seems a lot.... Here in the UK I expect 45mpg+ from a petrol and 60+ from a diesel.

30-35 mpg from a gasoline-powered car. But we don't have to drive clown cars to get north of 40 mpg, either. :D

Student Loans?

Don't finance a new car because that's just a money pit. Don't lease a car because of the commitment (what if you switch jobs in 1-2 years?).
I wouldn't even recommend getting a used luxury car. Insurance will be ridiculous on any of these three options.

Buy something for $2k to $8k on Craigslist, get major service on it, and drive it around. I bought a salvaged Nissan Maxima for $1,800 on CL, drove it for 50k miles over 4 years, and spent about $1,500 on maintenance over those years, which includes a transmission rebuild. And it had leather, heated seats, and a Bose system.

Btw, you forgot your alcohol budget. Many days you'll spend more on drinks than food. ;)

Now that's the kinda thrift I'm talking about.

(You can save money by sticking to 24-oz cans of Yuengling and $11 1.5 L Yellowtail bottles.)

double-post.

Uh, supporting mom. Good deal. She must be proud. The smart posters have all said it, the car is the main area where you need to save. You might be thinking you want to move something impressive, being in LA and all, but putting 500 a month in the bank instead of paying for a car feels better. The Hondas are looking sweet these days and are ridiculously cheap. You can go new or get one a year old. So look to see how you can spend 250 a month on a car, plus the hundred in insurance and you are SAVING over 500/month off your planned budget.

Remember, SAVING. Put it in the bank so you can build a nest egg. Also, personally, I hate sharing apartments. If you're still in college roommate/party mode, then cool, but at some point, you get tire of living with slobs, their friends crashing over etc. You're in LA now, heaven forbid you end up with the actor slash waiter types. The bums will eat all your food, drink your beer and if you get the one that eventually makes it, the bum won't thank you when receiving his Oscar. Remember, you do have to wake up every morning after a good night's sleep, so you can have your wits about you. My friend lived in West Hollywood in a nice apartment that was surprisingly cheap. With this economy, you might be able to get a nice apt there for a nice price and even get a free month. Drive by all the apartment buildings and see who is advertising deals.

As far as food, obviously, you'll be going out, but that's a separate issue. If you go grocery shopping every two weeks, instead of eating out everyday, you should be able to feed your self - well- for 300 a month. Cooking is actually fun and after a couple dates, you can cook for a girl at home and she'll be impressed (lots of cooking shows on cable and lots of recipes on the net) Pasta is a buck a box, so you can even upgrade from Ramen.

And back to my pet peeve, your hot LA dates can't be running around in their underthings if your roomies are crashed out in the living room.

Housing: $1k per month (with a roommate - should be fine in LA) - looks realistic and this will most likely be enough to cover utilities as well, unless you have a stay home roommate that will blast the AC 24/7 during summer months

Utilities: ?? - negligible

Car: $900 per month + $100 per month insurance (?) + $100 per month in gas - I've been there myself, bought a $35k car right after I graduated and it's equivalent to your $40k factoring in inflation. Trouble was that insurance will rape you every month. Car washes, detailing, maintenance, and other shits will end up costing you way more than the $1100 you have in mind. I also regret doing that because I wasn't able to save much and when I had to do a career change, I didn't have much in savings and ended up digging into my 401k (IP is gonna be laughing his ass off right now).

• my suggestion is to go finance a $20k used car with low mileage that is reliable and won't make you look like a grandpa. This will reduce your insurance cost as well, but will still cost you about $160 a month. A more realistic insurance premium on a $40k car is about $250 a month for someone your age and the location of where you live.

Phone, TV, internet: $120 per month - yup

Clothes: $100 per month - unless you shop at Marshalls or Ross, I don't think that's realistic. I spend on average of $2.5k a year on clothing (excluding suits)

Support my mom: $500 per month - good for you

Food: $15/day on average = $450 per month - are you assuming that all your dinners will be covered by work? - I spend an average of $20 a day just on lunch and snacks alone

Misc costs + going out: $600 per month - how you gonna afford to buy tables and bottles?? Without those there ain't gonna be no models!!!

You didn't factoring "Shit that happens out of nowhere" cost

You didn't fully budget a realistic savings rate per month. Don't rely on discretionary bonuses because like it states it's discretionary!!! A lot of us have been through at least one if not more of these financial market shit storms and the last thing you want is to be living a lifestyle that is highly dependent on discretionary bonuses. If you can, try to budget $800 in savings a month to give you financial security.

As far as the car thing goes, a buddy of mine just bought a slightly used 2011 Mazda 3 with something like 25K (km, not miles) on it. He paid 16K and that thing is in mint condition. It also drives pretty nice. Not a bad way to go if I were you. He bought it from the dealership so he was able to finance it over 3 years.

You forgot to include parking expense. It's in downtown, right?

As a current college student with no meal plan I can say that if you actually pack your lunches and only get food from grocery stores, food will only cost 60 bucks a week tops. And this is with fresh food.

So much waste going on in this budget. The secret to financial success is saving early on and letting interest accrue!

This kid's going to be a shit financier. New money...smh

Dwight and bear - do you guys live in Seattle?

He prolly has six figures in the bank. What you got? Oh, a five figure car loan, lol.