One of the things that kids don't really learn about is how much stuff costs. If a kid wanted to make estimates about cost of living, it will be kind of tricky because of a lack of real world experience. Since everyone is different, everyone will spend different amounts of money on different items. For this reason, there is no real book a man can read to find out what the cost of living is. It is here where I would like to lend some assistance.
Ever since October of 2010, I've recorded all the stuff I've purchased into logs in order to know how and where I spend my money. I've created detailed reports for myself and put my life down on spreadsheets. In this chain of posts, I'll report real data of all the stuff I've bought over the last few years and how much it cost. All this is done to provide information for how much stuff costs in the real world for kids that haven't entered the working world yet. The other reason for this is for me to remember my journey for the last few years.
Here is where I was in November of 2010.
In November of 2010, I was working my first job fresh out of college. At the time, I was being paid $12 an hour as an independent contractor and I didn't have a cap on the amount of hours I worked. Because of this, I was happy to work more than 40 hours each week. With the timing of the paychecks, I earned a little more than $2700 that month.
At this time, I was still living with my parents as it was my intention to save up enough money to buy a house with 100% cash in order to avoid taking out a mortgage. As soon as I started working, I made the decision to never get married or have kids. I did still want a house. My parents encouraged me to live with them in order to not waste money on rent. I was glad to do so.
I had no girlfriend and made no real effort to date. The furthest extent to finding a woman was to reach out to maybe one or two girls I remembered in college.
My work site was the closest I ever had. It was more than 11 miles away but less than 20 miles. I had no reason to take the highways.
Lastly, in my free time, I would play videogames, skateboard, and lift weights.
The car that I was driving was given to me by my father. I had no car note. Speaking of loans, I had none. I came out of college with no debts. I had merit based scholarship that paid for my tuition.
I was in a very good position for where I was. Even though I would eventually be working for a salary of less than $30,000 a year, I was still able to save $1000 each month because of how little I spent.
For November 2010, I spent a total of $478.20.
The biggest expense I had was my car insurance. I spent $222.75. My premium was expenses but I did have full coverage.
My gas expense was only $61 for this month. Normally, gas would have cost me over $100 however my dad filled up my tank because we took a trip to South Carolina to visit relatives.
I spent $51.79 on fast food. I got fast food 7 times this month which would average about $7 per visit. In later months, I would spend way to much money at Krystal because it was the closest restaurant to my work site.
I gave my dad $40 for some reason. I can't really remember why though.
I went out to two restaurants with some friends. I spent $40 at the Vortex with two friends from church. On a different occasion, I spent $8.50 getting pizza and beer with my two bros.
This month, I spent a total of $35.53 on CD's and DVD's. I think I bought the second season of Metalocalypse because I saw it at a Walmart. I also picked up the Demon Days album by Gorillaz at some music shop.
In November 2010, I spent less than $500 and it would be a long time before I subbed $500 again. The first few months after graduating college were incredibly bad. I had the nervous compulsion about spending as little money as possible. In later months, I felt like I could relax a little and spend a little more money.
I also get the feeling that recording all my transactions made me spend less month than I otherwise would have.
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