As I transition back to school I want to make sure that I’m not going into any more debt than I absolutely need, so I’m making a super school budget!
I wrote about the first steps here. I’m building on how I made my school budget based on my spending analyses.
From my spending analysis I was able to compare my spending in each category side-by-side:
| Year End 2013 | Year End 2013 | Q1 2014 | Q1 2014 | |
| Category | Total | Average/month | Total | Average/month |
| Debt repayment | 4650.27 | 387.52 | 900 | 300 |
| Savings | 7530.13 | 627.51 | 3363.16 | 1121.05 |
| Bills | 2201.39 | 183.44 | 382.75 | 127.58 |
| Housing | 8285.98 | 690.49 | 2268.8 | 756.26 |
| Transportation | 3113.63 | 259.46 | 512 | 170.66 |
| Entertainment | 1524.09 | 127 | 257.76 | 85.92 |
| Extra | 6494.72 | 541.22 | 413.59 | 137.86 |
| Life | 2129.08 | 177.42 | 467.35 | 155.78 |
| Spending | 35929 | 2994.1 | 8565.41 | 2855.14 |
| Income | 35389 | 2949.11 | 9701.79 | 3233.93 |
This is a great first step, but let’s go deeper!
For each analysis I started stripping away the costs that I won’t have in school
| Year End 2013 | Year End 2013 | Q1 2014 * | Q1 2014 | |
| Category | Total | Average/month | Total | Average/month |
| Debt repayment | 4650.27 | 387.52 | 900 | 300 |
| Savings | 7530.13 | 627.51 | 3363.16 | 1121.05 |
| Bills | 2201.39 | 183.44 | 382.75 | 127.58 |
| Housing | 8285.98 | 690.49 | 2268.8 | 756.26 |
| Transportation | 3113.63 | 259.46 | 512 | 170.66 |
| Entert. | 1524.09 | 127 | 257.76 | 85.92 |
| Extra | 6494.72 | 541.22 | 413.59 | 137.86 |
| Life | 2129.08 | 177.42 | 467.35 | 155.78 |
| Spending | 35929 | 2994.1 | 8565.41 (34261.64 for the year) | 2855.14 |
| Income | 35389 | 2949.11 | 9701.79 | 3233.93 |
| Minus Debt repayment | 31279.02 | 2606.58 | 30661.64 | 2555.13 |
| Minus savings | 23748.89 | 1979.07 | 17209 | 1434.08 |
| Half the transportation costs ** | 22192.08 | 1849.34 | 16185 | 1348.75 |
*The total numbers for Q1 were for 3 months (by nature of it being a quarterly review), so I extrapolated these numbers to a yearly amount (I multiplied them by 4)
** I subtracted half of the transportation costs because I will have a bus pass in school, but I am not sure if I will still use car2go/car rentals. I’m hoping this is a high estimate
From these tables I have the most important numbers: 1849.34 and 1348.75, which represent my budget without debt repayment, savings and half the transportation costs.
I then averaged these numbers to reach a modest monthly budget: 1599.04
This number is a great estimate, but does include things like entertainment and ‘extra’, which contribute an average of $106.46 and $339.54 a month respectively. I feel like the entertainment budget is modest so I will keep that, but if you take away half of the extra budget (and again, I hope I’m high-balling it), you can knock off another 169.77 from the monthly living budget to bring it to:
1599.04-169.77=
$1429.27 a month.
Not too shabby I think. A number that is based in reality, my lived spending experience, and does have room for all of the things I am used to spending.
Most importantly, it feels doable. And a budget needs to be doable for it to have any purpose at all!
Considering even working full time I would put over $1000/month into dept repayment and savings I would only have about 1700/month to live in a swanky downtown condo and take a car2go whenever my heart desired.
I do plan on tracking my spending in school and post monthly spending analysis as I did before. It will be a bit different since it’s not exactly a spending analysis as it will be a ‘line of credit tracker’ as I will be putting most of my school and living expenses on credit, but I feel like being just as detailed with my credit will help keep me out of trouble.
Prosperous Not for Profit 