Budgeting
April 24, 2008
One of the things I have to do to prepare for moving to and living in San Francisco is to develop a budget. I need to know how much money I’ll have to be making in order to make ends meet.
I know I’ll have some one-time expenditures. These include:
- Apartment Deposit, $1000.00
- Car tags, $230.00
- Fall 2008 Tuition, $2,100.00
- Books for classes, $400.00
- Deposit for electricity, $500.00
- TOTAL of $4,230.00
I have a substantial savings account, courtesy of my past four years as a dancer. I’ll withdraw some from savings and get a new bank account in California with this money, and use it to pay for these initial expenses, plus things like a hotel for the first few days I am in Cali prior to my apartment becoming available and having some furniture in it.
Then, of course, there are the recurring monthly costs. At this point, this is what mine will look like:
- Apartment rental, $1,850.00
- Medical/Dental insurance, $227.00
- Rental insurance, $30.00
- Car insurance, $255.00
- HAS Account, $100.00
- Personal phone, $100.00
- Business phone, $100.00*
- Electricity (other utilities are included in the apartment rental costs), $250.00
- Cable/Internet, $100.00
- Post office box rental, $40.00
- Furniture rental, $500.00 (I’m only here for two years, so I don’t plan to bring all of my furniture here from Florida only to have to ship it back when I leave).
- Web hosting fees, $50.00*
- Advertising, $250.00*
- Supplies (Condoms, basically), $100.00*
- Gas, $400 (I’ll be living close to school and walking to class, thank goodness)
- Food, $400.00
- Personal Care (hair, manicures, waxing, etc.), $250.00
- Gym membership (have to take care of the bod), $40.00
- TOTAL: $5,042.00
- I’d like to save about $1,000.00 each month as well to go toward next semester’s tuition)
- For a GRAND TOTAL of $6,042.00 per month
So, to cover the costs of taxes, monthly expenses, and other, random expenses, it looks like I will need to be making around $10,000.00 a month.
If I can clear about $3,000.00 more a month, I can afford to rent a second, classier apartment and furnish it so that I’ll have a local place to do incalls rather than renting hotel rooms. It’d sure be easier that way, but we’ll have to wait and see if I can garner enough clients to support that kind of operation.
Anything over all of that, of course, will go directly into a savings account. Like I said, I am a big saver, and an investor. All of the extra money I made as a dancer went to savings, a 401K, and some investments like mutual funds. Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue that practice.
Posted by Alexa | Filed Under Alexa, Work
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4 Responses to “Budgeting”
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Ooh, budgeting is so sexy! What else can we talk about? ;)
hehe well the budget seems a bit big thier your ganna have to pull some big stuff i cant wait to hear those stories i only hope your not ganna be to bussy or somethin
Blackdog, you know money is sexy! Come on now!
And hippy, I may have to adjust the budget as we go. We’ll just have to see how busy I get.
[...] living expenses for next month, and I think I can do that. Many of the expenses I outlined in my original budgeting plan are considerably lower than I had anticipated, so this figure seems to be reasonable at this [...]