Budgeting
Your Income (or lack thereof)
You're
tossing up your mortarboard in celebration. It's graduation time, baby! Congratulations!
Now go scrounge up those #2 pencils and that calculator
you thought you'd never need again. When you're
through posing for the camera with that new degree
of yours, it's time for the toughest homework assignments
to date - creating and managing your personal budget!
When I graduated college, I continued to work at
my part-time radio job to stockpile some start-up
dough. About a month later, I moved to a new city
with a chapter brother. We were clueless, and worse yet,
jobless. That whole summer, we subsisted on little
more than a bulk package of generic brand Popsicles.
At the time, it was agonizing trying to figure out
how we would make ends meet. Of course, hindsight
reveals the silver lining. Those few months provided
an ideal time for learning the true value of money.
Designing a budget that works for you is more involved
than you might think. It means you'll need to develop
a thorough understanding of the bacon you're makin'
and how much of it you're actually bringing home. The
salary your company quotes you is significantly
lessened after taxes, social security, and Medicare
are deducted - not to mention elective withdrawals
for medical coverage or a 401(k). [We'll talk about
such benefits another time.] Budgeting also requires a complete
knowledge of all your financial obligations. Take
a moment to write down the amounts you'll spend
on your monthly rent, student loans, car payment,
insurance, utility bills, cell phone and Internet
charges, gas, food, entertainment, and any other
monies you owe.
In a perfect world, your expenses could easily be
covered by the money you rake in at work. Unfortunately,
in the "real world," that's not always
the case. Because of this disparity, it may be necessary
to cut corners where you can. Here are a couple
sites I've come across to help you do just that:
 |
Craigslist.org is a huge network of classifieds and forums
- a place to find jobs, housing, goods &
services, social activities, advice, community
information and just about anything else.
Just click on the major city nearest you to
open a wealth of opportunity - all for free! |
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Hatch
Magazine "helps navigate the choppy
waters of post-college life." This link
will take you to the e-zine's popular money
page. |
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Digs
Magazine touts itself as "a home
and living guide for the post-college, pre-parenthood,
quasi-adult generation." Sound accurate
enough? Read through thousands of articles
geared toward helping you live richly while
still on the cheap. |
Probably
the biggest lesson you'll learn while designing
(and redesigning) your budget is this: The best
things in life truly are free, or nearly so. Though
it certainly didn't seem so at the time, those "poor"
days spent gobbling Popsicles are among the richest
of my post-undergrad life thus far. . . spent alongside
my apartment complex's pool reading piles of borrowed
library books. Sign me up for that again! It beats
a 9-to-5 any day. You'll see.
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