How Much Money Do You Spend Per Day?

February 21, 2017 By janersays in Money Tags: spending, thirties 1 Comment

According to yesterday’s (2/20/2017) Gallup polls, the average dollar amount Americans report spending or charging on a daily basis (not counting the purchase of a home, motor vehicle, or normal household bills) is $101.

What do you think of that? That number blew me away, primarily because I don’t make nearly enough money to spend that kind of money. I realize though that the number probably reflects people who have children and other dependents.

I used to try to live in about $30 a day. Which seems like a lot of money, but in actuality, isn’t at all. If you want to go out to dinner with friends, you may be spending $50 or above for drinks and dinner. Before I let go of the $30 per day thing, the $30 balanced out in my mind – because some nights I’d stay in and cook, and be spending only $10 a day, and then other nights I’d use the leftover money to pay for the dinners and nights out. But then I started spending more nights out and treating myself to self-care things like massages and the occasional self-help book on Amazon and I couldn’t keep myself within that $30 per day rule. And then I’d feel bad about myself.

So, I try not to think about how much money I’m spending each day. That’s probably not the best approach, but for now, it’s the best thing for my mental health. I try to be conservative obviously but I don’t want to be limited everyday to a strict amount.

Do you count how much money you spend every day? Laura, my fellow blogger and bestie, told me she uses an app to track her spending everyday. But it seems like too much work for me at the moment, even though she’s assured me it’s easy to use.

If you’re interested in seeing more data of how the average American spends their money and their overall job satisfaction, I highly recommend the Gallup site:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/112723/Gallup-Daily-US-Consumer-Spending.aspx

How to Balance a Checkbook in Your Thirties

April 4, 2016 By laurasomewherelse in Money Tags: account, balance, balance a checkbook, bank account, checkbook, checking account, finance, finances, Money, overdraft, payment, receipts, spending, thirties 2 Comments

I was on a break from work yesterday, and I simultaneously shoved forkfuls of salad into my mouth while I stared as my coworker meticulously copied each number from every receipt in her purse into her checkbook. I was stunned, transfixed by the preciseness of it all.

Neither my high school nor college classes ever taught me how to balance a checkbook. I opened a checking account somewhere around junior year of high school, but after that, and all through my twenties, I solely kept my accounts in order on a wing and a prayer

In my thirties, I have a higher checking account balance across the board that I’m more aware of and I love logging in to chase.com and making sure everything is in order (but that’s just me). I also use credit cards a lot of the time (Should You Use Lots of Credit Cards in Your Thirties?), and then pay them off every month, so I don’t think much about overdrafts.

However, I still really dislike budgeting, which I write about here in Budgeting in Your Thirties When You Hate Budgeting, and I’ve never learned how to balance a checkbook. The whole checkbook balancing thing just seems so quaint and old fashioned, but I think it’s actually helpful to know. So I went on a google search and landed at dummies.com, where I clicked on How to Balance a Checkbook.

I’ll dumb the whole process down even more than dummies.com, since I like topics- especially financial topics- to be in the most basic lamens terms for me. So balancing a checkbook is kind of like making a budget backwards. When you make a budget, you are laying out the future of your money. When you balance a checkbook, you are documenting the past.

So, to balance a checkbook, simply:

Write down, at the end of the day, the total money that was in your bank account at the end of yesterday.
Write down, in the little tiny spreadsheet in the back of your checkbook, every single cent you spent today. Go through your receipts in order to know what you’ve spent.
Write down every cent you autodebited from your account today- you may not have a receipt for that, so keep track of autodebits (such as rent, student loan payment, credit card payment, amazon.com subscriptions) somewhere.
Subtract ALL the money spent today from the total money that was in your account yesterday.
If your total is now below zero, you have an overdraft, and that is bad. Try not to let that happen again, by creating a budget for next time.

That seems to be the gist of it. If it sounds tedious, you can probably avoid the whole thing by making a solid budget and sticking to it. Also, check your bank balance regularly, and try to keep a higher balance in your account if you can. I know that’s a bit vague and imprecise, but the times where you’re most in danger of an overdraft are when you stray from your normal spending routine, such as if you lose your job, or when you’re traveling, or when you move, or if you have to make a major emergency purchase- like paying a sudden hospital bill. So be extra vigilant with your account during times like those.

That’s all I got on balancing a checkbook. What do you guys think? Any of you balance a checkbook yourself and have some helpful hints?

checkbook2

Budgeting in Your 30’s When You Hate Budgeting

October 27, 2015 By laurasomewherelse in Money Tags: 401(k), 80/20 budget, budget, growth, investment, IRA, Money, paycheck, Retirement, Roth IRA, Savings, spending, Student loan, thirties, Thirty, wants and needs 3 Comments

For all the writing I do about finance and money goals, I really hate to budget. I just can’t stand it.

Perhaps this is because I’m already a big saver, so when I want something, I usually REALLY want it, and not much is going to stand in my way. I hate not listening to my own written budget, but I wouldn’t listen if I really wanted something badly, so I feel like I’d probably go over budget lot of the time, and then I’d kick myself. Ok, so this is actually a self-control issue.

I walked around forever with budget hatred burning a hole in the pit of my stomach until recently, when I read an article and realized I’d been kind of following an unofficial budget strategy all along. I googled the info in that article and came upon even more articles that outlined alternative budgeting strategies. Turns out, I naturally follow a common budget strategy called the 80/20 budget, though my version is actually a 70/30 budget.

The 80/20 budget is basically the simplest and least detailed way to budget ever. And I love it, because the details of budgeting make me nuts. Here’s how it works: when you get a paycheck, 20 percent goes to savings. The rest is fair game to divide between needs and wants. That’s it.

This is kind of amazing if you’re never sure how much you’re going to spend in any given month- no matter what, you’ll still be saving. I do a 70/30 budget, or actually a 70/10/10/10 budget, which is only slightly different than the 80/20. The way it works is:

I get a paycheck
I put 10 percent in my retirement account immediately
I put 10 percent in my savings account immediately
I put 10 percent towards my student loan immediately (this is always in addition to the minimum monthly fee I pay)
Then the other 70 percent is divided as best I can among EVERYTHING else without making a budget.
Within the 70 percent, my NEEDS include: Rent, utilities, and student loan minimums (definite needs), as well as food, metrocards (transit), laundry money, and toiletries.
Also within the 70 percent are WANTS including: eating out and or/drinking with friends, food and coffee and green juice splurges, new shoes or clothes, tickets to theater, subscriptions to Spotify and Hulu.

Don’t get me wrong- it’s probably best to actually budget everything out little by little with a food budget, a clothing budget, and an eating out with friends budget. But I’ve never done this, and I don’t know if I’d stick to it if I did. So I think it’s better to at least have SOME sort of budget! And with the 80/20 (or 70/30, or even 60/40) budget, you’re at least still saving. If you don’t have students loans, I’d recommend putting at least 10-15 percent of your paycheck immediately into your retirement account, and then 10-15 percent immediately into a savings account.

What’s funny about taking a certain percentage out of your paycheck right away and paying down a debt and/or putting it into savings is how little you notice that the money is gone. It’s a strange phenomenon! Try it if you don’t believe me. Take 10 percent out of your paycheck immediately each month and put it into savings…you probably won’t even miss it! And if you do, you can always take it back. I wouldn’t recommend it…but the whole point is that your savings account belongs to you! 🙂

The Joyful Paradox of Saving and Spending In Your Thirties

October 15, 2015 By laurasomewherelse in Money Tags: apartment therapy, budget, hotels, maxwell ryan, Money, priorities, saving, spending, thirties, Thirty, travel 5 Comments

Today, I was at the airport, sitting next to a woman who was having an extremely loud phone conversation. She had a strong Irish accent and was discussing hotels with her friend/relative on the other end of the line.

“But is it a 4 and a half star?” she exclaimed, “I don’t want to be in another one of those low category hotels like before.” Her companion apparently told her something disagreeable…not about stars, but about price. “It’s $1500 now? Last time it was $1000. It’s going up!”

It’s possible that this woman was referencing a total cost of stay for a weeklong trip. Who knows? But in my head I thought she was referencing a daily rate.

And hotels really can run into the thousands for daily rates! They can actually get much pricier, especially when suites are involved! Those kinds of crazy high hotel prices don’t even require that great a stretch of the imagination! A friend of mine works at a hotel and she’s seen rooms multiple times that price.

How dare hotels charge those kinds of wild rates? That’s easy- because people will pay them.

Cost is relative. The woman on the phone at the airport seemed okay paying $1000 as long as the hotel was 4.5 stars or higher. Since the hotel had gone up to $1500, the woman was put off, but she didn’t seem totally averse to the new exorbitant price..because she cared more about the quality of the hotel than about the price.

And so it is with saving and spending…and a lot of life. Pick your battles.

There’s a great quote from the CEO and founder of the amazing home website, Apartment Therapy, Maxwell Ryan: ‘Save more than you spend in a way that keeps you happy and comfortable. You can be comfortable or uncomfortable on any level.’

Yesssss!! Even if you made 500K a year and furnished your Park Avenue mansion with the finest handmade furniture imported direct from Italy, you can easily find a way to want more and more… and still be uncomfortable. And if you made 30K a year and live with 4 roommates in a house in the far out suburbs with no car, you can still find ways to be extremely comfortable (well, you can try your darndest). The key to spending/saving comfort takes both knowing yourself and carefully planning.

As you go through life, you become more familiar with your wants and needs. What’s important enough to you that you’ll budget more money to get it? What can you forsake in order to save? Can you live without staying in a 4.5 star hotel? Are you more into spending most of your budget on dinners with friends? Do you want to shop only organic? Is living in the most popular, convenient (and expensive) neighborhood important to you? Do you value fancy cars? Once again- pick your battles. And sometimes it helps to throw money at problems you’d rather not deal with…

In planning your budget, and saving money, it really helps to know the difference between what you care about, and what you only think you care about. In this way, you won’t be a miserable wreck while saving. Don’t deny yourself your absolute very favorite things! Just find the things you can live without and go without them for awhile as you save. You can do it!

Yep, this is a real underwater hotel in Pemba Island, Zanzibar. It’s called the Manta Resort. And for a cool $1,500 a night, it can be yours!

How to Pay Attention to Your Dollars in Your 30s

December 8, 2014 By janersays in Money Tags: Aging, budget, Debt, dollars, lessons, Money, Savings Account, spending, thirties, Thirty 1 Comment

Since I’m in my final year of graduate school, I try not to think too much about saving money, only because I have no money coming in. Okay, that’s somewhat of a lie – I do have a part-time job at the library where I write and post social media content. But all of that small amount of money goes straight to everyday expenses and rent. I also occasionally find coins on the street. Does that count?

Even though I don’t have real money coming in, I do get excited about the prospect of being able to budget and save money in a real way once I graduate. So today, when I was avoiding working on my final projects and was instead taking a stroll in the wonderful land of the internets, I found this article: “7 Financial Decisions Made In Your 30s That May Haunt You in Your 50s.” There’s nothing like fear to make me click.

The article has a lot of good tips and ideas for saving money and it’s definitely worth a read.

This tip was my favorite:

Pay Attention to your Dollars

The author writes:

“If I could take back what I spent in the past twenty years on coffee, clothes I bought on sale but rarely wore and my “guilty pleasure” books, I’d be a wealthy woman.” – Nancy Anderson

It’s so simple, right? But so hard to internalize and practice regularly. What are your indulgences? Mine are definitely drinks – from $4 lattes to $1.89 diet cokes to $7 glasses of cabernet. It’s hard to just start cutting these seemingly small indulgences out of your life. As silly as it may sound, these treats bring me great happiness in my day.

Now, the question is: How to pay attention to the dollars? (For some people budgets work. I’m not a budgeter, but like I said, that’s mainly because I have no money coming in.)

For me, two things have helped. 1) Keeping a journal of what I spend. I go through phases of this. Certain days I am religious about it, and then I drop off for a bit. But basically, the gist of it is that I write down EVERYTHING I spend that day, including the $1.50 for the bus. It helps to get a basic idea of what you’re spending everyday.

2) I set a daily limit. My daily limit is somewhat high, but you’d be surprised how quickly it goes. I try and spend about $30 a day. Now, this may SEEM like a lot, but really try and do it, and you’d be surprised how hard it is. Many days earlier in the week, I only spend $10-12 on food, drinks, etc. But when it comes to Thursday-Sunday, it gets harder. There are social functions – dinners, drinks, movies. A meal out, with a drink and tip, will generally cost $25-27 (at the types of places I go to.) So this means that I have to spend $3 the rest of the day, or eat into the other days. Which is generally what happens. For instance, I spend just $10 one day, and then one weekend day, I spend $50 when I end up going to see a play or movie and pick up a bottle of wine for a party.

What works for you? How do you pay attention to the dollars?

OMG I'm Thirty

Everything You Should Know About Your Thirties

Tag Archives: spending

How Much Money Do You Spend Per Day?

How to Balance a Checkbook in Your Thirties

Budgeting in Your 30’s When You Hate Budgeting

The Joyful Paradox of Saving and Spending In Your Thirties

How to Pay Attention to Your Dollars in Your 30s

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