I live alone in a two bedroom apartment. Rent alone runs me 38%. Adding in electricity and the phone brings me up to 43%.
What amazes me is that I thought I was doing good. I realize that a lot of people out there make more money than I do but I’m still doing better than a lot of people still. Hell, I only make $2 an hour less than my father and he’s had his job for ten years whereas I’ve had mine for three months.
How are you people only paying 20%? Roomates? Holes in the wall? Extremely well paying jobs?
Well, I’m kinduv in that range… and probably a little bit of the latter two apply. I live in a fairly plain, low-rent, one bedroom apartment and I make decent money as a web developer.
But hey, I gotta leave room in my budget for the dreaded student loan payments.
Almost exactly 30%. My rent includes all utilities (though now that I have an air conditioner in my window, I have to pay an extra $50/month w/ ac). In fact, I had the stat that you weren’t supposed to spend more than 30% of your income on housing in my head when I was looking at apartments. I made a rough calculation of my estimated net pay (it turns out that it’s really gross pay, so I save a bit of money).
Then again, my boyfriend and I live a couple blocks away and spend pretty much all of our time at one person’s or the other’s, so we’re probably doubling expenses. We just weren’t ready to dive into the whole living together thing.
