![]() ![]() Add that to the babysitting we did, and our extra income was $350 – $400 per month, which was ALL put into savings! I was able to work remotely a few hours a week at my old job to bring in about $300 per month. With our budget, we would have made it by just fine, but we would NOT have saved any money during that year without our side hustles. If you don’t have a large income, keep your budget in line with your take home pay, and if you want more, then go earn more!įurther Reading: 6 MOVES TO MAKE MORE MONEY THIS YEAR! Simple Tools To Help With YOUR $14 An Hour Budget And we stayed away from subscription services and impulse buys (no Amazon Prime back then).Īnd most importantly, we didn’t go into further DEBT to try and live above our means. We stretched our dollars with coupons and meal planning. We went on simple, free adventures instead of costly date nights. We were able to live frugally, and still enjoy life. Sticking to a budget requires that you SPEND LESS THAN YOU MAKE, and making $14 an hour requires some sacrifice.īut just because you can’t go to the movies every week, or bar-hopping every Friday, does NOT mean that you cannot ENJOY living! ![]() We didn’t eat out a ton, we didn’t buy new clothes, and our food budget was VERY small (hint: we ate very simple meals, not all organic either). Getting ourselves a month ahead of our bills relieved that stress and truly made us feel financially free.įurther Reading: Stop Living Paycheck To Paycheck: Step By Step Living On $14 An Hour Requires SacrificeĪs you can see in our sample budget, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room. Because I was paid twice a month, tracking when our bills were due and adjusting our budget every payday got annoying quick. The first thing we did was get ourselves a month ahead on our bills (spending last month’s money). We could have cut this down, but we liked STAYING WARM in the winter □Įxtremely small budget, made possible with meal planning!įree exploring, split meals, coupons, no alcohol when eating outīased on this budget, we were able to save $300-$400 a month only making $14 an hour. This is VERY LOW today, but finding roommates can make this possible Here’s a snapshot of our budget during that year: Income That only lasted about 2 weeks, and we realized that we could not only survive on $14 an hour, but thrive! Simple Tools To Help With YOUR $14 An Hour Budgetįirst, I figured out how much $14 an hour REALLY WAS per year and per paycheck.Īfter taxes, we were taking home around $1,075 every paycheck, so we had to learn to STRETCH our budget quickly! Our $14 An Hour BudgetĪt first, we thought we needed more income, so Michelle got a job.Living On $14 An Hour Requires Sacrifice.This is my movie money!!! Time to have fun. ![]() If I budget 50 dollars for movies I don’t have to bashfully slink into the theatre suspecting I’m spending my rent money on the latest Polly Shore flick. Once that money has that job, I don’t feel bad about spending it there. Which means that you’re making the best use out of every dollar that’s coming in.Īlso…. Knowledge that your money is going exactly where YOU WANT IT TO GO. “Is this something I want? Or just something that I’m buying out of habit” How you’ll feel after living the ‘Rule 1’ life: It takes awhile to figure out where it’s needed, but just the simple act of being more engaged in your spending habits will start bringing up the question Money works better if it has a specific job. “Yes, I will take that sweater.” “Please borrow some money.” And all of a sudden I couldn’t pay my phone bill until that next cheque came in. When I started to make money, I looked at my account balances and saw that I was flush with cash.” Of course I can go out for beers”. The problem is that account balances lie. So whenever a cheque comes in, it gets assigned to one of those categories. It can start out pretty basic, but as you go along the more specific it gets the more fun it gets (yes, I said fun) In order to do this, you have to have an idea of what your expenses are (That’s where the money tracking comes in). Don’t worry about the big picture, just make sure that every dollar that comes in has a job. Spending categories change all the time depending on how much money you have, and what the demands of the month are. It’s really difficult when you’re dealing with a variable income to plan for how much money you’re going to have in a given month. ![]()
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