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Like Amara said, if you’re living in China, the best way to save costs is to live as close to “like a native” as possible. Everything for white people and tourists gets a pretty steep markup. If you’re not willing to sacrifice $13 milk and fresh fruit, that’s understandable, but where do natives get their fruit (milk is rare and you might have to bite the bullet on that price, but lots of people eat fruit)? Are you shopping at the same stores as them? For clothes, is there any way to borrow/rent an outfit? What are you eating that costs 75 RMB/day? If you have any native friends, it might be good to check in with them and see how they source things.
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Jan 13, 2019 23:23
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 00:47 |
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That’s great to hear! Keep us updated! Your salary should be enough to live quite comfortably if you use native stuff instead of white people stuff, so even the other parts of your budget might not need change if you can manage that one adjustment.
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Jan 17, 2019 08:24
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coolusername posted:Alright, it's a new month and I'm back! I almost forgot but then I saw that crazy Z-guy floating around the other forums and was filled with budgeting inspiration. Yeah, people complain about Zaurg because he's an incompetent stubborn moron, but he does great for keeping other goons on the path to financial stability. The pinned newbies thread or the YNAB thread ( https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3599364 ) can give you examples of other people's budgets and you should steal from them everything that looks useful, but fundamentally a budget is just a plan of how much money you're going to spend (or earmark for future spending) in a given month. Categories can be simplified by combining multiple things together, but try not to do a weird combination like "I'm gonna combine my eating out expenses with my children's healthcare expenses, so if I eat out too much, my children don't get doctor's appointments", because that's zaurg-level dumb. The simplest categories I can think of are: Fixed/Mandatory Costs (with individual line items for your rent, phone, utilities, health insurance, transportation, everything that you have to pay every month and can't do without or can't easily cut down on; many people put retirement savings in this category too) Monthly Costs (stuff you pay for once a month that can be adjusted for next month if necessary) -- netflix, gym, short-term saving*, Costs that happen during the month -- food, eating out, entertainment, household expenses, clothes, etc. This is spending you can adjust on the fly, like if you're mid-way through the month and realize you've spent too much on clothes already, or whatever, you can just stop buying new clothes to stay in-budget. The categories you have in your OP are simple budget categories already. "Other" you can break into household expenses and short-term savings* and whatever else you buy (or leave it as "Other" until you figure it out). Food should separate drinks/alcohol away from pantry/at-home food, and consider separating restaurants/eating-out as a separate category from it too, if you want. Once you've got the categories, the next part of budgeting is: "how much money are you going to spend this month, in these categories"? You'll want to look at your previous month's RMB amounts spent and determine a reasonable amount for your next month's RMB spending, based on that (and your goals). *short-term saving as in "100/month vacation fund that I'm gonna spend as soon as I have enough saved up for a fun vacation" or "100/month because I want a new TV and it'll cost 500". Obviously, you will still want to buy expensive things, and this is how you can save up the money for it if it's something so expensive it can't fit into a single month's budget. Congrats on cutting down your pantry bill so much! That's fantastic!
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Feb 3, 2019 21:43
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That’s a great improvement! Congrats on the cat! I did the math and of the non-monthly bills you have listed, it looks like if you put 1000 into a “bills that happen less than once a month” fund, and put in 1000 more at the start of every month, you should have enough to pay your less-often bills (haircut and electric bill are the big ones, really) out of that account whenever they pop up. I rounded up, too, which can either catch a bill you forgot or be used for nice things later. For your monthly bills, 4500/month (or 5000/month if easier) into a “monthly bills/expenses” category should take care of those for you, with a little bit of buffer. This gives you just under 7000 RMB per month for living your life before your savings goal, which is about 40,000 RMB (~$2,000 credit card debt (still, or did that improve) + $4,000 cash). Your savings goal wants you to pay just about 5000/month to it (I rounded up again, so you have a slight buffer where you can slip a little bit but still be on track to succeed), which looks just barely doable if you work real hard. How does this sound (accounts ordered by priority): Every month you move 5,000 into “Account A: monthly bills (including rent).” Every month you move 1,000 into “Account B: uncommon and rare bills”. Every month you move 3,000 into “Account C: credit card debt” (this will gradually decrease your interest too). Every month you move 2,000 into “Account D: I will probably take this back out but only if I run out of money” (try not to run out). Is that possible, does it sound doable? I’m not sure how your bank feels about making multiple accounts, how often you get paid, or how much you hate logging into your bank website to do transfers. That gives you 2500/mo remaining if 13500 is always your income, and that’s like 75 RMB/day or something (approx 600 RMB/week). That is a food/entertainment spending of less than half (is half easy to intuit?) of the 6000 you spent last month. That’s only eat out for 20 twice a day, every day, and then additionally spend only 100 extra on the weekend. It’s MUCH tighter than you’re currently used to, so expect it to be hard and to run out near the end of the month (stretch it as long as possible) and have to transfer some money back from your “only if i run out of money” fund. That account will eventually be your $4,000 cash savings account. You’re still spending a lot more than you need to, especially if you’re regularly partying and drinking, but you’ve already improved so much that I think it’s mostly because numbers confuse you real bad and not because you’re actually an idiot about impulse control. If that suggested budget is doable and you can manage a month with it, you can look into adjusting the numbers more precisely (4,700 instead of 5,000, for example) to give you more spending money the month after. It’s a more aggressive budget than I’d normally suggest (because your savings goal is aggressive), but I believe in you! Edit: I think I misread. If your 6000 INCLUDES the 2000 you just spent on uncommon bills, then cutting from a current ~4000 food/entertainment/misc habit to a goal of ~2500 food/entertainment/misc should be quite doable and you should have a good chunk of this month’s money currently left over that you should use right now to pay down a chunk of your credit card bill (good job!) Colin Mockery fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Feb 24, 2019 |
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Feb 24, 2019 21:13
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Beep, how’s it going? How was your February? What about March? Were you able to stash anything for savings?
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Mar 28, 2019 21:03
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coolusername posted:Had to drop $900 on doctors bills. I’m sorry to hear about your doctor’s bills, but I’m really glad you were able to cover it with your emergency fund (or with something that could be converted to an emergency fund)! It must have been a huge relief to realize when you got the bill that you could just take care of it without having to figure out how to get hundreds of dollars on short notice. A sense of security and “Oh, I do have enough”, is exactly what you (and BFC) want for all your bills, which is why budgeting is so important and spending within your means is so important, so this is a clear sign you’re on the right path. Good work so far!! (Apologies if that sounds condescending, I’ve been reading the zaurg thread and that dude’s a dense moron.)
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Apr 20, 2019 03:55
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 00:47 |
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Nice! And you've still got 6 whole months to build up your cash savings goal before the end of the year! Plus, managing to work around obstacles means that when the obstacles finally go away (especially the ones that are just bad luck), everything's gonna feel a lot easier.
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May 25, 2019 11:44
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