Journal Entry 57: Before You Move Out.
Jesus, if you're not in it, I don't want it.
Journal Entry 57: Before You Move Out.
My two oldest children have moved out and started families of their own. My 3rd oldest, my oldest son, Reid, just turned 18 and he's been talking about getting his own place. I told my kids they can stay home until they’re 24, so long as they're working and not bumming it on dad’s dime. So far my oldest have told me “love you dad, but I got to get my own place.” I guess a house of 9 people can be a bit much lol.
I had my Krav teacher, a former soldier and war veteran tell me something in a wonderfully blunt way. “Because you're dad, you don't know shit.” He laughed while saying this, because he's a master in 4 different martial arts, a trained and battle tested soldier, and yet his own kids won't listen to him about self defense or take his advice on the gun range. Two things that he excels at and teaches for a living. I can confirm Chappie’s, not his real name, blunt theory, because I have a home, lived on my own for several decades, and know a great deal about strict budgeting and financial discipline. Yet my three oldest still think they got things handled and have yet to take my advice into real practice. Chappie’s theory for dad’s has proven pretty accurate for me thus far. So, here I am, writing an article on a few good things to know before moving out, in hopes that someone will listen and benefit from my hard earned experience.
Things to look out for, if you’re going to move out soon. As my first two kids did not stay home and it looks like my third isn’t either.
Job: This is obvious, but it’s also, for most people, an absolute requirement for survival. You can’t call out sick, quit one job to chill for a couple weeks, before taking up another, if you’re living on your own and no one is paying for you. I fear this is the reality my son Reid is about to run into, hard.
A quick search on Google will tell you most “kids” leave home at 19, but then boomerang back due to financial crisis, and stay until they’re closer to 27/28yrs old. My theory, very unscientific, is that there’s a real struggle for kids today to understand the harshness and difficulty of having to work a real job, with real hours, just to be able to pay for what you have. In my area a one-bedroom apartment that ain’t nothing special will still run you $1,000 a month. Unless you’re walking everywhere, you have to have a vehicle. If you’re fortunate enough to have a paid-off car, a teenager is still looking at, roughly, $300 a month for car insurance. Add utilities to this, usually renter’s insurance, gas, and the basic household shopping list like groceries and laundry detergent, and you’re broke.
All the things mentioned above easily reach the $2,000 margin, leaving the newly independent kid with, if he’s/she’s making $16/20 an hour at a 40hr a week job, a few hundred bucks a month. If you eat out instead of budgeting groceries and cooking food yourself, all that extra money is now gone. This, by my unscientific theory, is why I think young adults typically fail at their first adventure out of the home. You can’t call out of work because you feel like staying home. You can’t drop $1,000 dollars on that new phone/computer/whatever, and let the bills lapse, because bills don’t care about you or your mistakes. I feel like I could leap off of this point into a whole mess of noodles on why we need to stop babying our kids and treating them like babies even when they’re teenagers, but I’ll restrain myself here.
Budgeting: From my personal experience schools are getting better at teaching kids basic budgeting and financial skills, but this is still a struggle for most young adults and even some grown adults. Budgeting is about being real with yourself and your income, your expenses, and then disciplining yourself to do right by your finances. This is hard, especially for kids and parents. I have a budget, I also have 9 kids, 4 grandkids, and a wife. Guess what, birthdays, Mother’s Day, Christmas, holidays in general, can wreck a budget quick. It’s annoying.
Create a budget. Even if the budget is a basic one that lists the bills to income ratio, and that’s it, that’s better than nothing. One very easy mistake to make when first moving out on your own is not knowing what bills need to be paid on what day. The next biggest mistake is not knowing how much money you will need to pay each bill on its due date. I try to teach my kids a simple method of budgeting. Total your bills up, like cell phone and such, and then determine how much money is needed at the end of the month to pay all of them. This is direct, yes, but it’s an eye opener to anyone who hasn’t sat down and done this. Next, divide your paycheck up amongst the dates things are due. For example I get paid twice a month, so I divide my bills into two different payments based on when they’re due and my two pay days. Why do I divide my bills, simple, because it’s easier to set up paycheck 1 to take care of these bills (house, car, lights . . .) and paycheck 2 to take care of these bills (subscriptions, gas, insurance . . .)
The above budget is simple but effective. If you set up your budget to total your bills vs. income, you now know what you owe and how much you need to make to pay all those bills. If you aren’t making enough, get a new job, a second job, or let go of things you don’t need right now, like subscriptions to things you can live without for a while like media and music subscriptions. I don’t know why anyone needs a subscription to six different movie/show providers, but it happens. The last part, dividing your bills by paychecks, helps take the load off one paycheck, helps make sure you don’t procrastinate and end up falling behind, and can show you what money you have left for any extras like a good steak or cool keyboard that you want. My son has a really cool keyboard, it’s white, scruffy edge lines on it like it’s out of a comic book, and clicks with each button press in a way that I swear is designed to relieve stress. I want one. Simple budgeting is good budgeting for starters, keep it simple. Simple makes getting started easier, makes getting into the routine of budgeting easier, and can help save you from a financial fall out.
Moving forward: This part is something that I want to put on here over other things for the fact that so many people forget that life is constant. I’m not talking about going to college. I don’t recommend college unless you are going after a specific job that requires college certifications, like nursing or lawyer or of the sort. College is expensive, time-consuming, and if you go to just go, you’re wasting your time and money. What I am talking about is constantly improving yourself. If you love playing video games on your free time, stream it. You don’t have to throw a bunch of money at it, but if you’re gaming, why not stream? If you’re gaming, and then streaming, why not post your videos to YouTube? If you’re playing games for fun, then turn that time into something that could bring in some money. You may or may not make thousands, but every bit helps.
Moving forward in your life is improving yourself. Learn a language on your down time and practice it where you can. Having a second language can net you an extra $10,000 a year at many jobs. If you like writing, write what you enjoy, books, articles, both. If you’re writing for fun, adding that writing to a platform like Medium or books to Amazon Publishing, is a few extra steps that may take your enjoyable hobby into a money paying side hustle. Again, I’m not promising thousands of dollars, I’m just saying that any extra income you make on the side doing what you enjoy is simply a bonus. If you enjoy music, learn to play an instrument. If you know how to play an instrument, see if there’s some way to use that skill. Volunteer at your church to help the band or create YouTube instructional videos on how to play. Use your time, don’t waste it, and let your time help you.
One more thing, INVEST: If you have any extra money, invest at least some portion of it. Investing would take a lot more than a couple paragraphs to go over, so this isn’t going to be a breakdown on investing. What I am going to add here, before signing off, is to tell you to invest some of your extra income into stocks, Realty, or even your education into trade skills such as mechanical, electrical, whatever finds your interest. Why trade skills? Because trade skills help in life more than college algebra. There’re always jobs hiring for trade skills. Ex. In investing, I have some money in stocks, I write, my wife and I have our own business (a huge learning experience), we garden, do woodwork and more. The list keeps going, because we’re always growing and learning new things. If we can do this with as large a family as we have, someone moving out on their own should be able to as well. Invest in yourself, you’re worth it.
Alright, it’s time to sign off and leave you with what I hope is helpful. Remember, keep it simple when it comes to your budget. Your job is your money provider (for 95% of us), so hold onto it, but also keep an eye out for better jobs/career options. Don’t waste time, use time to your advantage to keep growing and maybe make some side money. Invest in yourself, because you’re worth it.
Trust that Jesus loves you.