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I'm trying to estimate some costs related to living in SF (downtown) for budgeting purchases. I'll have a roommate, so a lot of these will be split, I just want to get the raw costs. Water and head - $100 (anyone know if this is accurate? This is based on some stuff online but I have no clue) TV/Internet - $125 (there are intro plans so it'll be less initially but I'm budgeting based on eventual costs, not some hook rate) Netflix - $20 Cell phone - $120 (<== this is for a blackberry from verizon with unlimited talk, text, and data. This is basically a necessity for work, and while I THINK they'll subsidize this I don't know yet, so am being conservative. Anyone know which provider of 3G smart phones is the best/cheapest in SF? Looking at AT&T it costs about the same) I'd love to get a sense of food and fun, but that's hard to pin down. I'm just making a ridiculous overbudget just to make sure I can support that, even though if I spent that much on food and fun I will probably shoot myself (especially given I will have provided dinners on weekdays). I imagine that letting myself go out to chinatown 3 times a week 10*3*4=120, then maybe your occassional nicer places 30*4=120, and then like 5 a business day for lunch/breakfast 22*5=110, around $350 for food (and the obvious overbudgeting accounts for groceries and whatnot, although I doubt I'll be able to cook a ton). I think I could do better than that in practice but it depends on what is nearby and whatnot. Not drinking soda or anything during the day seems to help keep costs low, as I'm fine just grabbing a cheap sandwich for lunch. Then there are student loans, paying those downs, etc. I won't have a car. Maybe I'll get a gym membership. Any big obvious costs I'm forgetting? A big variable is healthcare... need to talk to my benefits department. We got a document detailing options, but don't have access to the site that details costs. For people who work for big companies with good benefits, but that give you a choice (HSA accounts, high deductible, low deductible), do you usually have to pay something monthly for healthcare? How much? Either way being a pretty healthy 20 something, I feel like at the moment, whatever the cheapest option will be the one I go with. Probably some sort of high deductible thing. I have no medications (I take loratadine for allergies, that's it), and rarely get sick. As far as the move, budgeting 400 for a futon (tell me I can get a decent futon and slap it on the ground for this...), 700 for a sofa+coffee table (looking at Ikea website), and a security deposit of first month, last month, and 1/2 rent just to be conservative. Besides that, budgeting for work clothes, whatever they want out of pocket to buy the telephone (probably around $100 with a 2 year contract, I'll budget $200), plane tickets, etc. Thankfully I don't have to pay movers or anything, I'm just going to plant myself there. Any insight, costs, etc would be nice. I assume this doesn't warrant its own thread but if you guys think so, give me a heads up and I'll make one.
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Apr 23, 2010 20:29
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KarmaCandy posted:Rent? I'm pretty sure I mentioned it? I guess I didn't mention a DOLLAR amount, but yeah, I mean there's rent and I'm budgeting 2.5x out of pocket in the first month for security deposit. I just didn't want to get into too many specifics because I dunno, I'd rather not get too deep into how much I make or whatever.
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Apr 23, 2010 21:53
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Yeah, you're right. I'll throw out my more detailed plans for some sanity checking. I do have a roommate lined up (friend from college moving to the area about the same time I am, conveniently enough). We've been looking around and expect to pay ~2600 to live in Russian or Nob Hill (we've seen some seemingly good looking places as low as 2400, but will be moving in in August so we have to wait until then). I will have a bike (love biking, although those hills.......), but basically will be within a walk of work which is the most important for me. Being near-ish to Chinatown is a plus, and I'm sure there are busses nearby, but really my prime priority is being within that walk. I am planning on getting 2 nice knives, a nice sauce pan, a cast iron skillet, and maybe something else, should be around $200. He'll get dishes. If we need to cook more that'll be more down the line. I cover the furniture, he'll cover the TV. Edit: overly detailed thought process coming below. If I'm ridiculously overthinking it or something let me know. Would love to hear from people in SF how much they spend on food and fun. Everything else seems pretty easy to pin down. Hmm, the cost of eating and dining out I would like to get a better pin on. Cabs are a definite possiblity, I should probably include that. For fun, I really do like to just hang out with friends, go to bars, go to eat, enjoy nature, walk around...thankfully, I much prefer a cheap, delicious meal to fine dining (but am not averse to going a nicer place). I think the odds of actually going to a bar where I'd drop 50 bucks on a tab more than twice a week are really, really incredibly low (my job is going to be pretty hours intensive), but if I do go out and drop that much a cab is likely, at least on the way back. I would only really count on realistically doing that a couple times a month though. I do like long hilly walks though (unironically), I just don't want to get stabbed on the way back from a club. As far as my lunch estimate, hrm, yeah you're probably right. To be really conservative, let's say $10 for lunch. For breakfast, I usually eat cereal or yogurt, so I'll say about $15 a week for breakfast. Dinner will be provided for. 15*4+10*22=280. Dinner provided for on weeknights. That leaves weekends, so I'd realistically eat out, let's say lunch/dinner on sat and sunday just to be safe (if I have a really long lovely week and actually have a free weekend I doubt I will cook). Let's say $60 a weekend ($10 lunches $20 dinners), and we'll ignore that I'm a fiend for leftovers and don't eat THAT much. 60*4=240. 520. Jesus. This is showing me that I really need to take efforts to eat cheaper. I can afford 520 a month in food if I have to but it seems ridiculously high, but I guess that a solid conservative estimate should be. I mean, in college I ate out for every meal that I didn't cook (let's say 2 meals a day, and I cooked dinners on weekends), and I probably spent $10 a day on food on an expensive month. But I ate at foodcarts constantly that were pretty economical, so I don't know. Is food really that expensive in SF? I mean I like this calculation as a truly conservative guess, but I feel that some easy to cut costs would be lunch, really. My true ideal would be to eat and dinner leftovers for lunch, but that might be "frowned upon" by the office, so I don't want to count on it. Would love a sanity check here. Food is one of the areas I've always been pretty horrible at predicting because I like to eat out (kill me), but am good at eating out on the cheap (at least I was in Philly, but we had a lot of excellent $5 meal options). I suppose an important difference is that I like to eat with people and am not gonna want to tell people "no I don't want to grab Pho because I want to be cheap," and in college my friends didn't have income, so seeing an increase in food isn't unreasonable. I am assuming that one can get chinese takeout or pizza or the like for less than $10 in SF. Is this a safe assumption? To estimate fun, I'm really going to assume that I go out once a week, balls out, take a cab back. I have NO idea what this would cost though, any thoughts? If I'm drinking out, usually 4-5 drinks is good for me if I wanna get drunk but not too drunk. I feel like $80 a week is a solid estimator. The odds of me drinking more than once a week are really low... it might be worth factoring in grabbing a quick beer after work though. Let's say that happens twice a week, but I only drink 1 beer on such an outing... $20 a week in miscellaneous booze, and on the non clubbing weekend night going to a bar with my roomie, which would be say...$40 to enjoy a snack and some beers? 80*4+40*4+20*4=320+160+80=560. With the much higher food and fun expenses I still am within my income, but yeah. I don't want to spend that much on food or fun, but it's worth sort of budgeting what seems natural to me. I think food is probably harder for me to cut down on, whereas not going clubbing as much or something is pretty easy. I'm not a big clubber, I'm just expecting friends and coworkers to want to go. I feel this is an incredibly conservative estimate. I am expecting to work on a good week 70 hours, on a bad week 100+ hours. Have no sense of how the distribution of those occasions is going to be, though. What's the best way to budget food and stuff like this? Overbudget, and then adjust accordingly when I actually start living there for a while? Or actually try and get a more realistic picture? I feel overbudgeting is great until you overbudget so much that it looks like you can't afford to live. Right now I'm within my income just barely, and I'd like to be able to save (it looks like my company will match up to 3k in yearly contributions which I'll definitely take advantage of, any excess will go towards killing my student loans and building an emergency fund). Thanks for the help, Karma. I appreciate it. I know that was a lot of text but this is the part of my budget I've always suffered at. The rest is mainly asking around and being slightly conservative. With food I feel people always want to be like "man I will just eat yogurt and ramen 8 times a day I will save SO MUCH" and end up destroying their budgets. 3rd World Dictator fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Apr 23, 2010 |
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Apr 23, 2010 22:48
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Perhaps there is another thread that is better for this, but I thought I'd ask here first. I have a minor situation which I want to affect my credit as little as possible. A previous employer gave me a work blackberry which, apparently, was in my name (I did not realize this). Due to an unfortunate gently caress up, I never saw the bill...until I got a letter from a collections agency looking for $300. Thankfully, I can pay this off immediately. HOWEVER, since it has gone into collections, I realize this looks very bad from a credit perspective! Is there anything I can do to minimize the impact to my credit?
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May 18, 2011 15:40
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Zeta Taskforce posted:Unless you are making a big purchase in the next 6 months, if everything else on your credit is clean, I doubt it will be anything more than a speed bump. I’m a loan officer and I wouldn’t even blink at a tiny paid collection account if everything else was solid. Thanks for this advice, Zeta. That makes me feel better. My credit is otherwise good. How do I dispute this? A lawyer?
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May 20, 2011 15:48
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