Thursday, November 20, 2008

budgeting with no income

So at the moment Im not working and I have no spouse to help bring in any money. Ive got the four kids to support and a huge mountain of debt. How the hell do I handle that?

First of all my numbers (kinda):
Im not actually going to tell the internet the actual dollar amounts of my budget, but percents should work.

Housing, including all related bills 50%
Food 18%
Car 8%
Debt Repayment 12%
Everything else 2%

The housing is high, I know but when you're poor there isn't much you can do. You all know the difficulty I` had in even finding a house so I don't mind paying the extra just to have a place to live.

The food is killing me and I with I could cut this down further, but I don't really know how.

My car is quite low because I don't have a car payment and I try not to drive much. Gas in Canada is a lot more expensive than it is in the US so it can cost me up to $60/week when the prices are high and I have a lot of errands to do. I enjoyed a nice $27 this past week though!

The debt repayment number only includes my minimum payments on my credit cards and payments to two other major debts. This does not include any payments to my almost $80 000 in student loan debt.

Everything else has to cover birthdays/xmas/emergencies/whatever. Trust me 2% of my very limited monthly budget is not much.

So how about you, is my budget startlingly different? Have any ideas on how I can make it work a little better, or better yet how I could get some more damn money?

1 comment:

Deleted said...

2% for everything else sounds horrible!! I am only trying to imagine the monetary for each, so sorry for the tight budget!! No Fun!!!