So it is the beginning of a new month and I got a raise!!! We are paid minimally as teaching assistants but it was announced that this semester we will be getting a small increase in our salary.
I know in the financial world we tell everyone that they should not practice lifestyle inflation. Lifestyle inflation occurs when you get a raise and also increase your budgets to reflect that raise. However I have been living on a very tight budget recently and this raise allows me to add $50 to my expenses for the month.
So I will be increasing my budget by $50 total…spread out across five budget categories as follows:
-House
-Food
-Household shopping
-Utilities
-Miscellaneous
I am increasing food and household shopping by $10 each, which really is not much in the grand scheme of things. Now that I have a room mate once again I think the utilities will increase because this person does not follow the same practices that I do when it comes to those things.
I included the miscellaneous category as well to catch all the things that do not definitely fit into the top categories.
You will notice that I did not increase the car budget. This is because I have been able to stay under the gas budget since I can take the bus most of the time to class. When I have gone over the maintenance section of the car budget I just roll the balance from the gas over and this usually covers everything.
After increasing the budget for the month by $50 I have just a tiny amount going to savings as an increase over what I was saving in the past.
Congrats on the raise!
Thank you!!! It is not much…but when you are a struggling student and can upgrade from ramen anything is nice!!!
So exciting about that raise, that is awesome!!!
I used to teach, and trust me, I know how little teachers and educators make.