Ashley The Millennial

Sunday Update

Happy Sunday! I don’t have my “what I spent money on” post ready to put up today so I decided to do a little update instead. I will resume personal finance related posts sometime this week.

I decided to change around my home page a little bit. I don’t like using stock photos on my own pages so I decided to put a picture I took on my home page. I love taking pictures outside so I chose one at random for now. Maybe I’ll change it later. I am still learning how to operate this site. I’m not really as tech savvy as I would like to be so it takes me a little while.

I connected a Twitter account to my blog. It’s an account that I plan on just using as a sort of extension of this blog. I’d like to keep all my personal finance stuff sorted on a separate account from my normal Twitter. It was being used for something else so I just took everything off of it. Twitter is the main social media platform that I use although it isn’t the only one.

I’d like to keep this blog mostly personal finance related but I think from time to time I might run out of things to say or need a break from that so I plan on doing more random posts like this in the future. I don’t want to get burnt out on personal finance so it’s good to have a change of pace from time to time.

-Ashley

A Few Ways I Save Money

I’ve been debating on some topics to write about lately and things I do to I save money seems like a good one. I might not cover everything in this post so maybe there could be another one like this in the future.

The main thing I do to save money might seem a bit silly but it works for me. I do not go grocery shopping most of the time. I give my boyfriend money and a list of what food we need and he shops with that. I’m more likely to just start grabbing things that I think we might need. So, I tend to save money by not shopping. I like buying junk food at the store so it’s good for me not to go. I do go on occasion and I may go one day this month.

Going off of that, I also save money by planning all my meals out in advance. I started doing this last year and I think it helps a lot with shopping and staying on track when it comes to saving money by not grabbing fast food. It also gets me more excited about cooking on the weekends. Also, when I cook on the weekends, I try to make big meals that will result in leftovers we can just reheat during the week. That’s another thing that helps with avoiding fast food.

Another food-related thing that I do might be frowned upon. I take a protein bar with me to work and that’s my lunch. I don’t even get the fancy, expensive protein bars. I like the Nature Valley ones that make it so my lunch at work ends up being under $1 per day. I’ve always kinda kept lunches light or not eaten at all if I’m at work.

I try to buy generic brands of certain things. I do get certain name brand items but it really depends on how good the generic brand is… I always get generic canned veggies and stuff like that.

The last thing I’ll include here is that I like to ask for things I need for gifts. One year for my birthday, I got a set of plates. This past Christmas, I asked for gift cards so I could buy things like shorts and body wash. I like to do that sort of thing; it just helps me out.

Everyone saves money differently so I know some people would never do these things but they are some of the ones I can think of off the top of my head that I have been doing. If I think of anything else, I might make a second post like this. Guess we’ll see.

-Ashley

What I Spent Money on from January 1-12

So, in order to help myself with budgeting and staying on track this year, I’m going to post what I spend on things every so often. Then at the end of the month, I can compare that to what my budget was. I might be specific with some of it but I also might not. It just depends on what it is.

I did pay my rent on this month so that’s $885 spent on that.

Next, I put gas in my car twice and that totaled $45.06. I fill it up all the way whenever I get gas; it’s just easier for me.

I spent a little more on food and consumables than I wanted. The total for that was $167.41 so I am going to keep a close eye on what I am spending on food for the rest of the month.

I budgeted $20 for savings this month so I put that into my savings account. Hopefully, that will increase as I pay off debt and time goes on. I know that amount of money isn’t really enough to meet my goals right now so if I am under budget on something, I may put that into my savings also.

I mentioned before that I wanted to take my mom out for her birthday this month and we did go out today. I got her a cupcake and some lunch. That totaled $33.12 so it was actually less than I planned. I will probably get her something to actually give her the day of. Her birthday is the 21st so I have a little time to think of what that might be.

Finally, I got my notice in the mail for the new stickers for my car so I decided to go ahead and get those. They cost $57. I know this was one of my sinking funds goals but I already have the money for it so I just went ahead and got it taken care of. Now I don’t have to worry about it later. I just put it into my “misc/other category. I was going to put it into the same category as the gas I put in my car but I decided not to. I really don’t have a reason for that; I guess it was just easier for me.

So in total, I have spent $1,207.59 so far this month. That means I have $742.41 in my budget for the rest of the month. At this point in the post, I would like to post the amount I have remaining in each category but I am working on fine-tuning how I do my budget so I think I will start that at a later date. Google Sheets rounds numbers which really bugs me because I want to provide exact amounts in these posts. And my EveryDollar budget is slightly different than my Google Sheets one (it accounts for every dollar I make) so I don’t want to use those numbers. I’ll figure it out, I’m sure.

I plan on doing a post like this every week. I think Sunday is a good day to do these, but the day I post is probably going to depend on my schedule and when I am paying for things. I work a typical 9-5 sort of office job right now so most of my posts will be on the weekends. I am really looking forward to doing these. It’s not the easiest thing to sit down and hold yourself accountable for things in this way when you’re not used to it, but it’s a change I am needing at this point in my life.

-Ashley

EveryDollar

Happy Friday! Recently, I decided to install the EveryDollar app to help out with my budget. Where was this when I decided to start budgeting? It is exactly what I was looking for in a budgeting app! It’s easy to navigate and I don’t have to connect my various accounts to it to use the features. I don’t think I had to connect my accounts to all the apps I tried to use before, but it seemed to be strongly encouraged and I’m just very against that. I found that if I didn’t connect my accounts, some of these other apps were very confusing to use. I haven’t been a fan of any I’ve tried and I’m trying to get out of debt so I wanted something free.

I heard about the app several times while watching Dave Ramsey. I don’t follow his methodology exactly when it comes to paying off my debt so at first I wasn’t sure how I would feel about it. I do watch Dave a lot and I decided to try the app after hearing him talk about it in a little more detail. When I realized it didn’t sound like I needed to connect all my various accounts to it, I was sold. You have to pay to do that, actually.

I’ll put a picture in of what it looks like for me. I might delete some of the categories I don’t need but for now, I left them in. I’m going to keep doing my Google Sheets budget too for now and I’ll see what happens.

-Ashley

2020 Sinking Funds and Savings Goals

I wanted to write down what some of my savings goals are for this year. This will actually be my first year of saving money consistently so I am pretty pumped about all of this. I think it’s a good change for me.

Anyway, my first goal that I want to save for is the stickers on my license plates. I forget how much that costs but they send something in the mail for it, so I will just try to save at least $80 for that to be safe. I know it won’t cost me that much (I believe it was $55 last time) but I am setting a higher number rather than lower just in case. I need to get those by March so they’ll be the first irregular expense I will actually try to set money aside for.

Another thing I want to save for is a nice suit and some other work clothes. I want to save about $300 for that. My workplace is business casual and I know will need some new pants pretty soon.

I also want to save about $500-$600 for my car insurance. I pay for that every six months in May and November. I want to try saving $1000 for car repairs also since I drive a fairly old car. I don’t know if I will need that much money for repairs but I do know I would rather have too much saved than not enough. Also, I want to kind of have that extra cash in case my car should happen to quit on me. You never know…

I want to have a Christmas gift and general gift fund of about $650. I bake cookies for Christmas and I want to include all the ingredients for those in that also. I will try not to put that into my food budget since I am baking for other people.

The last sinking fund I want to have is one in case I need to move. I am thinking around $2000 for that. I would want that to cover first month’s rent and deposits and stuff. I’d prefer to have more than that so I hope to build it up. I am not trying to move but rent is going up where I live and if they hit me with a high rent increase, I will need to find somewhere else to live.

Now those are all the goals I have but I just want to say that I am pretty positive I will not meet the last one. I might be able to save $3000 total for all of this once the if I cut back on everything. I won’t disclose my income but I will say that with my expenses, I do not have a lot to work with when it comes to saving or emergency expenses. Obviously, education and experience can change that since I am young but I just wanted to throw that out there. I get paid biweekly so there will be a month or two when I get three checks. Those will be saved unless an emergency comes up.

As a sort of footnote to this, I am considering going back to school part time. I would want to pay cash for my classes so that could cut into some of these funds. If I decide to do that, I would do one or two classes at a time when I could. That might be something I discuss in another post though; career regrets.

-Ashley

January 2020 Budget

As promised, today I am going to share my budget for this month. One thing I have decided not to share for now is my income. My budget might be enough for some people to guess what I make but I don’t really want to put that number out there for now. I generally do not budget every single dollar I bring home just to give myself some extra cash if something comes up. I would like to post my monthly budgets after I set them and they will probably look about the same each month. I want to also show how I did at the end of each month. Anyway, without further ado, here is what I have budgeted for the month of January:

Food and Consumables: $350
Rent: $885
Gas for my Car: $160
Phone Bill: $48.07
Debt Repayment: $357
Misc./Gifts: $130
Savings: $20

Now, I will kind of briefly touch on each of these and explain myself a bit.

For my food budget, this is for 2 people and it is not just food. It also includes any consumables we use throughout the month such as laundry detergent, paper towels, and shampoo. Also, we have a cat so this includes her food and litter. Since we often buy those things together, I decided it would be easy to include them all in the same budget category. It just works for me.

My base rent is $860 per month and the $885 figure above reflects an additional charge that we pay each month to have a cat. Something you might notice that is excluded from my budget is any utility bills other than my phone bill. The reason for this is that my boyfriend handles all of those and I just pay the rent. We came to this agreement on how things would be paid for when we first moved out and it’s just what works for us. The only utility I do pay is my phone bill and I have a prepaid unlimited plan. My boyfriend has a similar plan to mine and pays his own bill for that. I won’t really talk much about his finances here.

After rent, you’ll see that I budget about $160 for putting gas in my car each month. This isn’t really a set number yet because I haven’t actually had a month since I started budgeting that I have used my car as much as I normally would. I think this month is going to be a good month to see if that is a suitable number for me. I travel about 50 or so minutes to and from work every weekday. That adds up so I do tend to get gas in my car every 3 of 4 weekdays. I drive a 2003 Ford Focus so it’s not something that takes a lot of gas.

The next part of my budget after my phone bill is my debt repayments. This is the total amount of 3 payments I make on 2 credit cards and 5 student loans. I pay about $132 per month on my largest credit card. I tend to pay the minimum at this point because I am trying to pay off my debts from smallest to largest and technically that credit card is the biggest single one I have. If the minimum is less than $132 on the large one, I just add the difference to what I pay on my smaller credit card. I currently pay about $50 per month on my smaller credit card but it has a balance under $400 at this point so if I am able to, I plan on paying it off with some of my tax refund. I make $175 payments on my student loans each month. I have 5 loans and allocate some extra money to the smallest one each month so I can knock that out as quickly as possible. I have always done that with those and have never paid the minimum payment.

Misc is just a random category for anything else I do not budget for. If I go out to eat, or have an unexpected expense, that is where that goes. I put “gifts” next to misc in this budget because my mom’s birthday is this month and I would like to take her out to eat as her gift (she doesn’t want any material things). I budgeted a little more than usual in misc so I can do that.

Finally, the last category there is savings. I know it is a really sad, pathetic little number compared to everything else there. But, it is up from the $10 I saved last month, so for me that’s progress. I cannot afford to save a lot at this point. Once I pay off my smallest credit card, I want to start adding that $50 or so payment I would have made to my savings each month. I initially planned on really going at my debts with that money. The reason I have ultimately decided not to, though, is because I want to start some sinking funds. I want to do that so I am not relying on a credit card or something when it comes time to pay a bill that I do not get every single month. That has been part of my problem. With sinking funds, I think I can do a much better job of managing my money. I will talk about what sinking funds I plan to have and what my goals for saving are this year in my next post, which I hope to get up later today or tomorrow.

-Ashley

Heading into 2020

Happy New Year! I think to start this off, I am going to briefly talk a bit about what led me down the path to personal finance and trying to achieve financial independence. Like I said in my first blog post, I moved out of my parents house in December of 2017 with pretty much no savings. I had no idea what it would cost to live on my own. I thought I had it kind of figured out, but I was very wrong. Between late 2017 and about September of 2019 I racked up credit card debt without really understanding what I was doing to myself. Then, in September, I knew this cycle just had to stop. Something had to give. It was partway through September, so I wrote down what I had spent that month and decided from there that I was going to put myself on a monthly written budget.

One thing I am hoping to do with this blog is to track my spending in a place apart from my budget. I currently use the Google Sheets app to do my monthly budgets on my phone. I like the convenience of being able to put a number into my spreadsheet of transactions right after I spend money. I want to share my monthly budgets here and share updates on how well I stuck to them. I’m not sure how I want to incorporate all of this just yet but I’ll figure it out. I will share my January budget in my next post, I think. I may just write that after this one.

In this post, I want to share the exact numbers of my debt as of last month before I paid on them. I pay them all within a week or so of getting the statement for the month. I have just always been very on top of bills so I choose not to automate these particular ones (my only automated bill is my cell phone bill). So, here is a list of all my debts from smallest to largest as of the last statement I got for each (except student loans; that is current as of today):

Credit Card B: $437.92
Credit Card D: $6,428.62
All Student Loans: $11,626.65

I will go over my payments and my budget in my next post, but this was something I really wanted to share. I think putting it out there for the world to see might help me a bit… Maybe. We’ll have to see about that. I will probably get a little more into sharing personal stuff about my life as I go on this journey but for now, I think I am off to a good start.

-Ashley

Why I’m Starting This Blog

Before I dive into this whole blogging thing, I decided to post a brief little explanation about why I am starting on this journey. I have a really hard time talking this kind of stuff out with people. I want to, but I’ve always been a bit of a people pleaser so it’s hard for me to admit just how deep in debt I am. I know it might not seem like much compared to some other peoples’ debts but for me it just feels like something that is weighing me down in life.

I’ve told people that I’m in debt, but I think my boyfriend is the only person in my life that I’ve really shown the numbers to. He doesn’t seem as into this as I am getting so I want to be able to really talk about it and express myself. If people see it and have anything to say, great. If not, no worries. I just want to have an outlet to talk about these things when I feel like I can’t go to anyone else.

I think in my next post, I will go over some real numbers and really get this started. It will probably be sometime in January. I need to make a plan and write it all out before I’m able to put it here. I already have my January budget put into a spreadsheet so I’m getting ready for the new year. Once I have some solid plans for budgeting and posts in place, I’ll get on here and post some more. I’m really looking forward to doing this. I think it’ll help me work through this weird time in my life.

-Ashley

First Post/Introduction

Hi, my name is Ashley and this is my first post here on my new blog. I recently embarked on a journey to better understand my personal finances and decided that I would like to document it as I go along. So, I am mostly writing this all out for my own benefit but if I can help someone as I go on my journey then that would be great. I plan on being pretty open about my various expenses here but I am not sure that I will go into saying what my income is or anything like that. As a brief introduction, I am currently 25 years old and I live in the great state of Ohio. I decided to start learning more about personal finance in September of this year.

My biggest goal at this point in time is debt payoff. I currently have about $11,600 in student loans and $6,800 in credit card debt (split between 2 cards). That’s about $18,400 total. I started with $18,700 or so in student loan debt in early 2017 (split between 7 loans) and I felt really confident that I would be able to pay it off quickly. I was able to pay off the two smallest loans within 2017 while still living with my parents. As the year went on, I realized that for my own sake I needed to move out and in December of 2017 I did. Since then, I have accrued an amount of credit card debt that (in my mind) essentially undoes all the hard work I put into paying off my student loans. I am back where I started. Actually, I am worse off because my student loans all have under 5% interest while one of my credit cards has over 18%. (The other is 0% for now and will increase in September of 2020.)

All my life, I just wanted to be financially free. Watching loved ones around me struggle with money made me want no part of that. I went to school so I wouldn’t have such a hard time. That might just be where I went wrong. I went for a degree that I thought would help me make more money; I did not really consider career options until I was in my senior year of college (one semester from graduation). At that point, I figured why not just finish and get my bachelor’s degree. Now I feel reality smacking me in the face because I do not make what I hoped I would and looking back, I think my only motivator was money. I don’t even have a job title that goes with the degree I got. And if I get one, I risk possibly taking a pay cut due to lack of experience in that particular job.

Recently, I have been trying to learn all I can about personal finance. I have been watching Dave Ramsey and other personal finance videos on YouTube to try understanding what I can do to buckle down and pay things off ASAP. At first, I was really motivated and I still am but once I actually sat down and added up the numbers to get my total amount of debt compared to what I actually bring home I felt crushed. I came to understand recently that I cannot just focus on these debts. I also need to save for expenses that are coming up throughout the year and just plan things out more. In the new year, I am planning on doing better. I have already started, but I know I can always work toward doing better than I already am. I think writing out my feelings and goals in this blog will help, even if no one but me sees them.

I’m not really 100% sure what kind of content I will be putting on here or how frequent I will post. I’m thinking it’ll all be personal finance related with maybe a few non-finance posts from time to time. I would like to post my budget on here and maybe do some check-ins for each month. I also want to do a post on pressure and how it can impact your financial decisions (for instance, going to school just to say you have a degree without knowing what you want to do). Every post will be personal though; I do not plan on doing any professional blogging or anything like that.

I am looking forward to finding out where this journey will take me.

-Ashley