(Or, The Numbers! The Fry My Brain!)

When moving from a comfortable hourly wage of $19/hr to a...less comfortable wage of $7/hr, budgeting becomes less of a nonchalant "Well, I guess I might check my account balance. After dinner." act and more of a necessity. So today, I shall examine and take budgeting suggestions for my current situation. First, let's examine just how much I'll be pulling in a month on $7/hr.

$7 * 40 (hours per week) = $280 $280 * 4 = $1120 (per month gross)

But of course, we have taxes to consider. So let's subtract 7% from $1120...we get $1041.60 per month net. Now let's look at expenses.

Rent - $565 Gas - $200 Food - $130 Utilities - $100 Car payment - $153 Insurance - $200

(I deliberately overestimated some of these, insurance and utilities in particular, and left out a few expenses, namely cell phone and misc. expenses.)

Sweet, we're $307 short. How can we save the money? Well, I could stop eating and start biking everywhere, but with a nine-mile commute, my legs might try to strangle me in my sleep for being so abusive to them. Utilities are unlikely to go much further down...I've replaced all the bulbs I regularly use with CFLs, and I don't run my heat or my AC. Nor do I spend a lot of time in the apartment, anyways. My expenses don't seem likely to go down very much. So the other option is more work!

This is actually likely - gigging to supplement my income might provide me with the extra $307 I need per month to make ends meet comfortably. I have a few freelancing opportunities that I might pursue - anybody else have any great ideas for saving money?

Exit, stage left. Sparks