Originally posted by: astroidea
Originally posted by: akubi
find roommates. $720/mo rent for a college student is utter stupidity. move into the student dorms if that's an option.
student dorms start at $1075/mo
i just actually cancelled my dorm plan because i found out it's at the exact same place as these off campus apartments that I just went to sign up for $720/mo.
i'm guessing you don't know california housing costs?
WTF kind of dorms are you living in? Even in California there should be a cheap "Everything in a 12x12 room with a community shower" option, right? If that's $1075/mo then I can't wait for California to break away and leave the US. I've seen posts on this forum where people are renting out a room in someone's house for a fraction of that... if you want to live at your means, you should probably start looking for a room to rent. I'm sure in the current situation there are loads of people that wouldn't mind an extra $500/mo at the cost of not being able to use a room to keep garbage they probably don't need.
Regardless, the VERY first step you need to do is to sit down a write out a proper budget and start tracking your expenses. If you can't make the money you are spending, then you need to cut the money you are spending. We can help you with that, but you need to tell us what you are spending for us to cut it. We need mileage per week, cost to fill up, expected maint. costs per month, insurance, expected food costs per week, alcohol money, housing, gas/electric/water/cable/internet... EVERYTHING.
It's not hard to get yourself on track financially, but you can't just try and memorize all this stuff and hope it turns out.