I wanna move out. But not sure about expenses.?

Question

How much do you think Id end up paying on bills and rent and all that other **** at the end of the month. Say in LA? San Francisco?

Answer 1

1. What is your monthly income AFTER taxes?
2. Are you willing to share living accomodations?
3. How far and long are you willing to commute? Don't forget traffic, parking concerns. How much will it cost you for car payment, gas, service or taxi/bus/train fare.
4. Can you afford the neighbourhood you want to live in or do you have to compromise? What are you willing to give up to live closer to work, the beach, public transportation.


Now pick a neighbourhood, go to a site like roommates.com or apartments.com and check out market rents ( you can probably find cheaper by walking around or looking at local classifieds). Are utilities included? On-site laundry? Free parking? Basic Cable?

So now you know:
A - monthly rent & utilities
B - your current phone plan (hopefully you won't be calling home long distance, or you'd better become familiar with calling cards or anytime/anywhere minutes)
C - your commute time and costs
D- your meal and entertainment costs (which really don't matter because you eat ONLY after paying bills)
E - how much your job or mom pays, so you'll know how you're covering all of it ( I apologize if you are independently wealthy).

Also, whenver you start a new "home" you will have incidental costs, such as new mops, sponges, dish soap, laundry soap, furniture, ketchup, bread, juice, etc. Basically you end up buying a lot of stuff that you take for granted if you are living at home.
As an experiment (or preparation), don't use anything in the house that your money didn't buy. So go but a vacuum if you want to clean your room, detergent to do laundry (and put $1.50 per load into a jar for each load) and you'll start to see what the costs will be like. If you are moving long distance then you won't move food, but you get the idea, pretend like you are living on your own and start to acquire a few of the basics (or just save towards them) while you're still at home (and if you want to give your parents that $1.50 per load as well as rent, they probably won't complain) :-)

Hope that helps.