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Hello, I'm coolusername, and I have very severe dyscalculia, the maths form of dyslexia. I did an A/T on it a while back, but disability tl;dr: your dog is better at counting if he can tell which pile of treats is bigger. E/N tl;dr: I broke free of my unhealthy co-dependent helicopter family dynamic by moving across the world and started my very first career after a lifetime of odd jobs, but this has landed me in a situation where I'm only keeping my head above water, when I should be able to save, because I have zero experience with this and the budgeting apps everyone uses I literally can't read. All numbers will be converted from RMB to USD, rounded and hopefully... right enough. Income: $1900 (USD) a month. May be getting a pay rise in Feb. Rent: $520 a month. Water: $3ish a month. Electricity: Anywhere from $20 to $60 a month. It's by how much is used and you can pry my heater in winter from my cold dead hands. Gas: I put $15 on it January last year and it hasn't run out yet so I'll just put this down as N/A. Internet: I have no idea. I haven't gotten any bills for a year and the internet is.. still here.. Phone: $15 a month. I'm swapping to a plan which should drop it to $9 but on the downside I have to cough up about $120 for a contract upfront. Food: I'm going to average out to.. about $15 a day. Some days it's under $5 and others it's over $30 so that works, right?? which means... $450 via google calculator maybe send help. A lot of the problem here is that there's some western foods I won't give up for health's sake, like fruit and Real Milk, and a jug of Real Milk is $13. Other stuff: ??????? CC Debt: $2000 Student debt: a ridiculously high number but I don't have to pay it back until I'm rich. Goals: I need my CC debt paid off and at least $4000 in liquid cash by the end of the year. Also a very simplified budget.
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Jan 2, 2019 16:41
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 17:40 |
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Don't worry, it's a tricky thing! I'll just read really carefully and do my best. Using whole, round numbers helps a lot since I switch the positions of numbers (so if you write 35, I'll read 53) and it's harder to gently caress up by moving 0s. I can't do that because I'm on a Chinese bank account and all my payments go through two different apps. But what I can do is swap to paying only with one app and then I can generate a wheelie thing in a week. Would that work y'think? I'll probably need help once I've done that to break it down in a way that makes sense but that's why I gave in and set this up.
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Jan 2, 2019 17:40
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Hold up! I worked out how to do it. https://imgur.com/a/gICbGs2 That massive spike is me paying my 3 monthly rent. And.. it looks like you're right on the food count? bhg, ole, familymart and wagas are all food places and there's triple that on the takeaway app too.
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Jan 3, 2019 05:55
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No ones reading but some things I changed, for my own records. I realized how much money I was spending on Starbucks and other cafes after looking over my logs and I screamed for solid eight minutes. I picked up some nice boxes of tea for work. I can have 25 cups of tea for the price of one latte. I started paying real attention to reflexively ordering a drink with my meal. In some cases my drink was more than the meal itself! So now I drink water with my meal. If I want a cafe latte after that, then I have to think about it and make a deliberate choice. It’s healthier, too. I’m trying to only eat out once a day for lunch, and cheap meals too. Taking food from home isn’t really possible because of difficulties fringing anything at work, but I do take in fruit instead of snacking out. I’m not going to renew my gym membership. The only way I’m getting another one is if I find a 24 hour gym because nothing is open once I get out of work as it is. I’ve been having more luck doing things like taking the stairs, push ups at home, etc. anyway. Unexpected uninsured medical costs have knocked out a huge chunk of my months pay, and unfortunately I have a formal obligatory work thing coming up without anything to wear matching the stupid loving clothing requirements, so I have to waste my money buying clothes. But I’ll try to get something I can also wear to work so it’s not a total waste. Still I’m fuming. Found where some more money’s going. I can’t not get my hair cut or dyed because I have to look professional and my hair is super limp and lifeless without it, but I can save a bit more by not getting my nails done. I can just keep them unpolished until I’ve built savings back up. Tune in next time to poo poo, where’s my money? The monologue.
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Jan 13, 2019 13:25
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Woah, this blew up. Hi everyone! - I live in the only city in China without goddamn street food. It's banned by the provincial government for ?? reasons?? and my Mandarin definitely isn't strong enough to hit up the markets. - However, the majority of my 75 rmb average is/was definitely drinks. Yesterday I spent 36rmb total on food for the day. If I'd had my habitual latte, that would have been 66. The day before I spent... 20rmb on food and 60 on drinks because I went to a bar with some buddies. Most of the time if my total daily food is above 50, it's either me dropping 35-40 on lattes etc., or an invite to a Western restaurant with buddies. - I can keep ordering food if I pick less Western options. The entire office orders in food, locals included, but they tend to order from smaller local joints whereas I order by poking nice looking pictures and shouting "Hey, will this melt my face off??? la de??" so I'll pay more attention to the brands they shop at. - The next time the co-workers team up to order groceries I'll get in on that.
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Jan 15, 2019 18:25
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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. Everything will be in RMB because I'm tired of converting. Just... convert in your heads if necessary. I've got 150 on my public transport card. My phone is fully charged for the month. Next rent is due in April. Internet bill is... still a mystery. I'll chase it up when my landlord's back from holidays. Next electricity bill is next week, no idea how much it'll be. It could be anywhere between 200 to 600. I managed to knock out half my pantry bill just by swapping out a few things to their generic Chinese equivalent. I didn't give up my precious milkstuff, but I did find milk for half the price that tastes okay. You guys got any tips on sorting out some budget categories? Really simple ones.
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Feb 2, 2019 16:49
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secular woods sex posted:This might be a question that was covered in your A/T thread, but do you have dyscalculia when you are thinking in Mandarin? No worries, if you've got questions I'm happy to answer. My a/t was forever and a username change ago. Yup, I have the same issues when it comes to counting - worse, actually, because I have to translate what I'm hearing over into English numbers and that doubles my error rate. Fortunately, China runs off electronic pay so i rarely have to handle cash and change, and I've found people pretty chill about poking the numbers in for me.
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Feb 5, 2019 09:04
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… so I adopted a cat BILLS: Yearly: Internet: 600 Gas: N/A yet (Presuming about 50) Six monthly: Club fees: 800 Tri-monthly-ish: Shampoo + conditioner: 99 Bi-monthly: Electricity: 342 Water: 25 Chinese VPN: 50 Hair dye/cut/etc: 600 Cat food: 100 Monthly(ish): Mobile phone: 100 Transport: 120 MMO: 90 Western VPN: 90 Interest rates on debt: 120 (Cut out 280 by changing from fancy manicures to nail polish) Rent: 3600 Litter: 80 One-time: Work: 50 (extra supplies like new folders and pens, teachers gotta teach) Cosmetics: 120 rmb for a full set of nail polish + base coat + top coat + some other badly needed generic stuff, this will replace my 280 a month and I imagine I’m not gonna need more for at least six months. Litter box: 100 Food Takeaway app: 165… this is a MASSIVE change of at least 500rmb savings! Go me! I stopped ordering in Starbucks, swapped off Western food (50 rmb a pop almost every day) to Chinese food (20 rmb a pop) and made more of an effort to walk places instead of ordering. … and then I lost track of everything else because I kept eating out and partying, so everything that isn’t the above is probably something like ‘eating out/drinking/both’ Anyway this month so far I’ve spent overall… 6000/13500 looking at my transaction summary and rounding (then add 3600 for rent but it's due every 3 months, so 9600), and 2000ish of that are bills I won’t have to repeat for year/six months/3 months I think? Changes made include saving 280 in upcoming months on cosmetic stuff and decimating my takeaway costs.
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Feb 24, 2019 15:27
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Colin Mockery posted:That’s a great improvement! Congrats on the cat!... Yes, the 6000 includes the 2000 and everything I listed except my rent! It's 6000 over all for everything, then 3600 for my rent. I'm thinking my savings goal might be out of my reach, because I have some important dentist bills coming up and insurance won't cover the whole thing, but let's see... I can't make multiple accounts (I live in China and so my bank account is sponsored by my work), but what I can probably do is create a budgeting app with those proportions and then base my spending off that? Cutting down on my entertainment misc will be tough because generally we do the 'food is ordered for the entire table and everyone splits the bill evenly' thing for most of my night adventures, so ordering cheaper stuff won't help (and would stand out very dramatically), or it's set ticket costs, but I have a lot less booked in the upcoming months. Anyway, upcoming big stuff: Health: Dentist bills: unknown. Have to deal with a wonky filling and staining. Entertainment: Shadowbringers expansion x2 for 800rmb - buying for myself and a friend. This + my monthly mmo bill will basically cover a lot of my entertainment next couple of months... I don't really buy other video games. Work: I'll need suits for job hunting, but this can wait until the second half of the year. Debt: -$1,710.77 aud Emergency fund in Aussie account: $500 aud Current bank account balance: 8000ish RMB. NOW THE CAT, The cat is a 5 yo abused kitty cat with no tail, he was found abandoned on the street injured but still docile/people friendly. Right now he lives under my bed, but he pokes his head out to stare at me and accept pets. I'm working on getting the entire body out next...!   I'm fostering until they find him a permanent home.
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Feb 25, 2019 02:48
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It's going much better now! I have 2.6k USD in the bank, after 3 months rent paid and a bunch of yearly bills. I swapped my phone deal out, which is halving my phone bill costs, too. I'm popping over to Shanghai to go to the cheap tailor market to get suits next week. End of the month I should have my credit card debt halved!
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Mar 29, 2019 03:00
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I will add that my (3 year old and rather battered) phone is kind of breaking, and my headset too. I'll be upgrading it, but I'm going to hope my phone holds out one more month to increase my savings and try to get a more budgety one instead of a flagship. Anyway, financial status: 28,500rmb - 10800rmb rent for three months = 2.6 USD at the start of this month. Yearly internet bill, social club bill, etc. paid up so I only have my (now halved) phone bill, water and electricity bills.
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Mar 29, 2019 15:49
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Brought a nice $100 wireless headphone set instead of a new phone, thus saving me like $800 because my heart cries for the s10. And at least $400 for the s9. And didn't buy the really expensive bose headset that the sales guy tried on me. Now I can wait for a big sale to get a new phone since my phone problem is broken jack/volume control. This is a huge change in my spending! Previous coolusername would have just gone "i deserve the best phone because I work hard and REALLY it's a saving because--"
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Mar 31, 2019 12:21
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I slipped up and started buying coffee again. I was tired, it was a 6 day week, and then, welp. Next thing I know my food budget for a week+ has been 50%: food, 50%: coffee. Some days I'm spending 40 on coffee to 30 on food. Fuuuck.
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Apr 8, 2019 03:07
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Oh, I'm talking in RMB! So 40 rmb = $6 USD or so.
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Apr 8, 2019 14:47
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Sorry, don't really follow Pryor? 
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Apr 9, 2019 03:53
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Suzhou! I know, it's crazy. Even all the nearby neighbour cities have streetfood but there's none approved here. Maybe I'll find those satchets on taobao, I'm really just looking for a sugar caffeine hit for my 9 hour hell days. Trying not to beat myself up too much. I've swapped out a lot of my weaknesses like cheaper water and milk... coffee, though...
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Apr 11, 2019 06:10
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Okay, purchased satchets of instant coffee. Definitely not as tasty as actual coffee, but as caffeinated as required. Hopefully I'll now manage to roll back my coffee related budget slip up.
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Apr 12, 2019 06:42
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:everywhere in china has access to hot water for tea so just get a french press, a little grinder, and some beans To be honest, we're not going up against my money so much as my willingness to expend energy on my work day instead of either having soneone hand deliver me coffee or shoving powder in a cup and slumping away.
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Apr 13, 2019 03:04
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Had to drop $900 on doctors bills. Thank GOD i took your guys savings advice. If I'd gotten the phone i wouldn't have had the money.
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Apr 19, 2019 05:36
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Colin Mockery posted:
He is literally the inspiration for this thread. I saw it when it was migrating and realised if I didn't sort myself out, well, there would be me. It's a bit much since i was raised by multiple bankruptcy never can retire hoarders but I'm trying to curb all the bad habits I internalized like "i worked hard, buy it" and "credit cards can be paid off one day free money" Like one Christmas my mum literally dropped 2k+ on a CC until I begged her to stop buyjng me things because I knew she couldn't afford it. i was like 14?
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Apr 20, 2019 08:15
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In one shopping trip, I mean. Just straight up in the store buying everything I liked while I drowned in guilt. Freaking christmases
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Apr 20, 2019 08:16
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So I'm going to end this month with 650usd in the bank and no paying off my credit card like my original plan, so still in debt [Sad medical trombone]
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Apr 25, 2019 10:18
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Does getting facefucked by capitalism get any less annoying? When I made no effort, I was doing fine, I start making an effort and everything catches fire.
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May 8, 2019 09:46
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Filling issue but fortunately insurance should cover most. I'm just gonna sulk. I'm still above water so ten points for not going shopping, right? I haven't bought any random unnecessary poo poo in ages.
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May 9, 2019 05:03
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 17:40 |
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Paid off my credit card!
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May 24, 2019 03:30
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