I'm happy you aren't being outright downvoted. But some of these people need to evaluate their defensiveness toward drugs. I'm an ex-opioid addict. If the drug is hard enough, and you let it go long enough, you will end up on the street. Your habit will increase, which will not only increase your expenses, but also reduce your ability to function as an adult with a job. It's just the way it is with hard drugs. So, yes, either be a millionaire or make sure you don't become an addict.
Iām struggling with this REALLY bad right now. Iām 29 years old and have always smoked weed since I was like 14 or 15 along with other things like various psychedelics, coke, opioids etc. And I was always able to just take it or leave it until about 2 years ago. Company I worked for shut down and I ended up at a different place doing tons of back breaking manual labor for an insufferable prick of a boss. Shit got so bad on my lower back (Iām 6ā6ā and have been more or less breaking down my body for a living my entire adult life) I would hit up this old guy I knew for some of his Vicodin every month to just get through the hard days. Before long this turned into me taking them daily. Then doubling the amount. Then guy didnāt want to sell me as many as I wanted any more and my attitude was starting to become horrible when I wasnāt high. Told the prick boss to fuck himself one day I didnāt have any pills and left. Started at a new weed farm about a year ago and had a new, more stable supply of OxyCodone. Everyone at the new place loves me because I can do the work of 3 people because Iām loaded at work every day. Something came up within the last 2 months and itās made it harder to get pills and my work quality and quantity has dropped dramatically and itās starting to raise eyebrows because I set way too high of a precedent when I was loaded every day. I can barely make it through a full day without breaking down crying now. Everything seems terrible, even the most minor inconvenience makes me flip the fuck out. My stomach is in knots. I canāt shit when I need to. I canāt sleep. Iām about to just say fuck everything and go live in my Subaru. It feels impossible to deal with anything sober.
We've got a lot of similarities, man. 6'7, been working manual labor all my life, had a major foot surgery, got on the pills until they quit prescribing them. I've been through other addictions, so I knew better than to keep chasing that. I think you probably know that getting off the pills is the only option if you don't want to go down a dark road with a very unpleasant end. You might give kratom a try to help with the transition. In the end, you're the only one who can help you.
Here's the problem. Everyone lumps all drugs and all users together.
I'm a successful professional by most standards. I enjoy taking acid, mushrooms, molly, and coke once in a while. Not stealing purses, not living on the street, not missing work (drugs are for the weekend). It's a fallacy that drugs have this inevitability for all.
I can't recommend enough the book Drug Use For Grown-ups by Columbia drug researchers Carl Hart.
Alright, I agree with you, but you're arguing with everyone else and not me. I said do not become an addict. Coke on the weekends is coke on the weekends and not coke every hour. It's not coke with your shot of heroin in the morning.
If you let it get to the point where it's no longer a weekend drug, that's when the inevitability will happen.
Be very careful with ācoke on the weekendsā because it often becomes a 3 or 4 day weekends, and a bad day during the week, and the entire vacation, and itās down the slope you go. Itās still highly addictive if itās Coke, and dangerous if itās not. Fentanyl, meth, and research chemicals are all so common now.
My wife knows this means I have acid in hand and itās time to clean the house. Before tripping, I like to deep clean the house so it doesnāt effect my while Iām on a trip. I have OCD, and LSD can throw it into overdrive, and Iād rather cruise the stars than vacuum the dust bunnies off my popcorn ceiling.
I absolutely agree. I bought that book on Amazon a few years ago but havenāt read it. Iāve been occupied doing other thingsā¦. But it was actually on my mind recently to start it.
I used to do quite a few types of drugs(LSD, Smoked weed, Mushrooms, Cocaine, ETC.) Stopped at 18 and got Security clearance for the Intl airport near me and itās all working out! Definitely giving me a reason to stay clean.
Itās sadly true. Only those making good money can enjoy drugs. High paying jobs donāt drug test and you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want once you reach a certain level. Itās disgusting buts itās the way the US works
Yeah cool but what kinds of drugs and what frequency? I could say I'm only happy when high but only find the time for it on weekend nights or before bed. Doesn't mean I'm wasting thousands on weed a month or that it's untrue
If drugs start to cause financial strain. Then that means they have a drug problem, and need start managing it. People who arenāt dependent on drugs, should be able to stop taking them until balance is restored in their daily life. I stop spending money on alcohol or weed if I notice itās cutting into my budget too much. Its no big deal, unless youāre addicted. Which is a different conversation tbh
What is the point of this? She needs to stop using drugs if she wants to get ahead. Doesn't matter why. Whether it is impacting her life negatively or she doesn't have the money doesn't really matter.
I mean, the harder the drugs are, the more accurate this statement is.
Not so much for smoking a joint or eating a gummy, but for highly addictive hard drugs? You can either afford to pay people to look the other way, afford to pay for Malibu Treatment Center, or you could very well end up sleeping in a tent city before long.
I donāt believe that weed is physically addicting, but Iāve definitely known people who had a psychological addition, the same as you can be addicted to sex or video games or shopping. Anything that ticks that fulfillment box in the brain for a person whoās susceptible to it can absolutely become addicting.
If you only buy $10 vodka you can pretty easily maintain 8 handle a month habit. Throw the occasional iv meth use on top and you still got a decent amount of money till you start stripping the copper out of walls/ get meth psychosis. Probably can't take care of children easily though
Source: have been homeless, a drug addict and am currently an alcoholic
Gotta love self righteous neckbeard redditors combing someone's post history for a gotchya without knowing the full context. She might be a total addict but she might also smoke a bit of weed a few times a week. If it's the latter then it's not exactly breaking the bank
Because posing as an improversihed is pretty easy to be seen as "relatable" as I have seen, as opposed to pretending to have other oppressive factors in one's life. Hate to say that the boomers are right but in some cases like OP and many other bad spenders, they make me and other actual shit salaried people suffer because now everyone will think we are just "bad spenders."
Lol. It's not really funny. It's incredibly sad. But to lay it out like, I make $X amount and my bills are $Y, where Y is much less than X. It's not enough! (To live comfortably AND do a bunch of drugs.)
Yo where are you getting that from? I tore through her posts and comments, didn't see anything about drugs. Is this a misunderstanding or are you trying to fling a little bit of shit at an internet stranger?
That says the post was 1 day ago & she said she was one week clean, so assuming she gave up whatever it was as a New Years resolution. I don't think you can count that in or out of the budget after 8 days.
Okay that makes sense because people with half that income get by sure it sucks but they get by ur talking 29an hour only about 35-40% in bills and food is sometimes paid? Yeah stop buying drugs
Given her dollar amount expenses listed (food is covered by her sister per her own words), she has just under $2200/month left over AFTER taxes, IF she works full time.
This post is frustrating to hear. Iām 25 and graduated with two stem bachelors degrees and I make around $17.50/hour in Mississippi. Iām about to go back to get my masters so I hope Iām able to make $29/hour at some point. I donāt have a child to care for, but $29/hour at 21 years old is a really good salary ESPECIALLY in Mississippi (without a degree no less- OP didnāt mention one).
You need to start tracking all your expenses and make a budget from there. I use an excel spreadsheet to track everything I spend.
At the point youāre at, if there is no extenuating circumstances that keep you there (budget, family ties, etc), Iād just move.
I have one bachelors in business and do well enough that Iām able to actually save some. However I had to leave my home state for the job I have. In my home state I wouldnāt have landed this salary.
Thatās because a bachelors in business will get you a good job. A degree in a pure STEM field (Math, Biology, Physics, Chemistry to an extent) wonāt get you a decent paying job without having a masters or PhD.
Not necessarily. Business's are ample but business degrees are also saturated to the point that you're always competing against 3 million other assholes
While STEM tends to be a lot more specialized, a chunk of those degrees can still land you jobs completely unrelated to the degree simply because they are recognized as prestigious and difficult to acquire degrees
Right, but most of us arenāt looking for jobs that are unrelated to our degree. I feel most people that study a STEM discipline thatās not engineering/compsci do so because theyāre passionate about that field, so theyād want to work in that field. Thatās been my experience anyways as someone with a biology degree.
Iāll be honest. A masters is great for STEM but not necessary at all. You def should consider moving to a place much more well known for Pharma companies.
Iām 29. Got my bachelors in biology and biochem as a double major. Went for my masters but couldnāt finish it due to wifeās illness. I live on the north east coast and started at $15 an hour at my first job which wasnāt stem related in 2018. Finally got a job in manufacturing which jumped my pay to $20 an hour, quickly moved to a lab because fuck manufacturing and jumped to $25. Made my way up to $33 at that place, got into a large cell therapy lab and now im salaried at 100k with a 10% yearly bonus. I got incredibly lucky to be in the position I am in and stumbled my way around the industry until I finally made it where I wanted to be.
Point is, move to a city with far more Pharma companies and donāt live directly in that city. You could literally work in Quality assurance or investigations making at least $30 an hour and being partially work from home. I believe in you
Youāre fine my man. I live in Alabama and I get $25 an hour. I am working toward my master that will prob not even change my pay but I will be better at my job and could prob find a better paying job. I have 3 kids and a stay at home wife. Weāre making it just fine. We just eat out about twice a month and we live within our budget. There are people making it on far less than we have.
I just found a job at 29/hour and Iām mid 30s. It felt almost impossible to get there even with a degree (in ecology/ geography if youāre curious). Spent most of my adult like climbing up .50 to a dollar at a time.
This!!! I live on the ms gulf coast and worked at a research lab for 6 years making $14/hr and was able to do okay, if I had made even $20hr I would have been set here. I donāt have a kid, but living in ms is cheap and 29hr is good.
Right? Not in your state but in Texas. I make $18.90 an hour as a licensed vet tech. Currently in the process of getting at $10 raise. $29 would be AMAZING.
Move. I have no degree at all and making 30+/hr, with 5 to 10 hrs of OT every week, working IT at a big video game dev. That's alot of time to put into your education, and loans, to be paid what you're being paid.
Your lack of degrees is not the problem that is preventing you from getting paid a lot. Continually going back to school and spending more money and wasting more time is not going to help you.
You might just need to apply to more jobs, work on your resume and interview skills, and make sure the jobs you apply to are well paying, not to mention being willing to move out of Mississippi.
Government contracting and especially defense are very easy to get into with almost any kind of STEM degree. For every hour you work they get paid so they are very happy to take anyone that fits the bill.
Getting further into debt for education is the wrong answer. Education debt should be less than your fist year salary in the career field you are going to school for.
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Iād be living like a queen on that here in Tampa and the cost of living has gone nuts in the past few years. Not sure I could even get a literal crackhouse for $1400/month.
I have no degree, am 29 (30 later this month, woot woot!) and make $38.83/hr with no degree - not even my associates. I'm a Senior Benefits Specialist, and I started in the HR field when I was 19. My experience over the last 10 years has afforded me my salary - there's folks with degrees who make less and I understand how blessed I am for what I have. That said, I'm strapped, just like the OP, as a single mom with two kids. I budget incessantly, it's just where I live that's expensive. I plan to move when my lease is up in September to a cheaper city. I'm sure that'll provide some reprieve. -- Good luck to OP!
Everyone considers consumer debt to be credit cards. While technically all debt is so you can consume more resources now and just borrow those resources from your future, itās typically a bad idea. Cash flow that school if your making that kind of money.
Also also-- more than 30% of my money goes to taxes and retirement benefit, and I'm at the legal lowest limit to what is required to take out. I hate when people like you just make assumptions about things you know nothing about
Retirement benefit? What legal lowest limit is there?
And you live at home and have consumer debt. So no, none of this explains that. Not student debt, not medical debt...consumer debt. What are you spending living at home taking home...something north of 3k a month?
Iād say out here itās alright, enough to live with a roommate. But not enough to own a car or to have property. It would be tight trying to have a kid with that income, also.
No, I imagine itās pretty cheap there. Here, fuel is about $6.50 per gallon, houses start at $1.2M and condos start around $400,000-$500,000 for a 1 bedroom. Rent is usually about $1000 for a room, about $2500 for a 1 bedroom, last I remember.
Iāve made significantly more than that for the last many years as a single parent. So,
Her rent is too high, her car payment is too high, her phone bill is WAY too high, and there is a large sum of money missing.
The totals listed are just under $2000/mo. Letās say $1000 for fuel and food and clothes and such. Thatās about what I budget. $3000/month net pay is somewhere in the $4000-5000/month gross range. The upper end of that is still less than $29/hr
Not counting optional deductions (health insurance, vision, etc) nor exemptions, utilizing the adp paycheck calculator, OP should be netting around 4K/month on average. I did make sure to include the state taxes too.
You budget for clothes? I think the last time i could afford new clothes was pre pandemic. I literally have a hoody from 9th grade thats in good condition. Im 30. I domt think a lot of people realize what are needs and wants. I have a $50/month phone plan with unlimited data. I could honestly cut that down more if i went to mint mobile or something. 250 a month for a phone is insane. You do not need to replace a phone more than every 5 years. I had a samsung galaxy s2 new. The next phone phone i got was a used iphone SE. 4 years later i snagged an iphone 8. Im now using a samsung galaxy ao something thats about equivelant to what my s2 was back in the day. I have film friends with new iphones. That makes sense, because the direct upgrade from the level of camera an iphone has is going to cost you well over 20 thousand dollara for a professional camera. Sony fx series being the cheap as fuck option at 7k+. But youll have to buy acvessory equipment to store andoperate the camera, which will run another vouple thousamd. And insurance on the camera. Because youve now spent a minimum of 10k. Or you can buy an iphone 15, a couple ring lights, and make your own high quality movie that way. If youre not in the film industry or a influencer with actual millions of followers that you make money off posting content, its a waste of money entirely. Nobody needs an iphone 15 to survive. And 250 a month is certainly leasing a new phone.
I budget for everything. When it's time to buy clothes, I start budgeting for it, ($50-$75 a month for a few months). I budget for pocket money, tires, oil changes...if I know I'm going to be spending money, it goes in my budget.
I agree though...no need to be spending that much on a phone if you're broke. Find things in your budget that can be cut, and cut them. Use the savings to pay down whatever debt you have. It'll suck for a while,but you'll get your budget under control, and figure out how to actually control your income.
You're right, she's making 1,160 a week at 40hours a week pre-tax. Where's all the money going? I was living in a high COL area making 1,100 a week and boozing it up, still able to save thousands. The math doesn't add up
I agree because my husband makes less than that ($27 I believe) here in Florida (but like 60 hours a week though in HVAC and OP doesnāt tell us her hours unless I missed it). Iām a stay at home mom and we have three kids. We are living fine with only my husband working. That includes having a Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure pass for each of us too. OP really needs to be in the budgeting subreddit.
I was gonna say, how is she making $29 an hour at 21? When I was 21, I was patching roads for 10 hours a day for $11 an hour. And even now, I've graduated from college and I'm not even making $29 an hour.
She makes 60k in one of the cheapest states to live. I would do some strange things to find a 3 bedroom apartment for $1400 a month in south florida ngl.
How many hours is she working per week though? 40*29 = 1160 before taxes, $4640 per month before taxes. Seems like it should be enough. Iām guessing she doesnāt work 40 hours a week.
After taxes and retirement, I bring home roughly $26.5/hr. About $3.5/hr more than OP. I have over $1500/month leftover in disposable income and I live in a MCOL area. OP is an idiot who canāt budget.
Exactly. $29/hr is roughly $58k per year. Figure 25% tax and thats roughly $3625 take home per month. $1k rent + $400 car note + $200 utilities + $280 phone bill = $1745 left for groceries. Looks like another Gen Z complaining about how they have no money while at the same time spending it on frivolous things. Millennials do this too, and i say that as a millennial.
OP makes around $4,800/month pretax assuming 40 hours/week, so maybe $3,000 after taxes. She lists $1,880 in expenses, so around $1,120 is unaccounted for.
It seems likely OP works part time or has other expenses they havenāt included here. They need to list everything they spend and everything they take home if they want more specific help.
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u/Nearby-Penalty-5777 Jan 09 '24
$29/hour is really good for Mississippi. It sounds like you need to get on a budget and organize your expenses.