You moved out of your parent’s house — now what?
Here is what to expect
You did it! You took the step to move out of your parents and now you can file as an independent on your tax returns (lol).
Moving out of your parent’s house is not easy especially in the world we live in today where income to rent ratio is unfair. To be honest, it is not going to be easy, it is going to be extremely hard. The first year is going to be the biggest challenge between learning how to pay your bills on time, grocery shopping, furniture shopping, etc.
I’m going to talk about my personal experience moving from New Jersey to Florida at the age of 22 on an internship with Disney.
I moved into my first apartment in Orlando on a Disney College Program salary which at the time was $10/hour. I know you are probably thinking about how I managed to live off that. This is how…
I had roommates.
Having roommates will help cut the cost of the rent. I lived in a three-bedroom apartment with a couple and another girl. From my memory, I believe I paid $420 a month before utilities for my room. The average electric bill would be $30–$50 per person depending on the season and the wifi was paid by my roommate.
The next step was buying furniture.
I bought all of my furniture from Walmart and I haven’t had any problems with it. Of course it is not going to age as well as Ashley’s furniture store for example, but it worked better with my budget.
I purchased a full-size mattress at Walmart for $180. This mattress is comfortable and I am still using it three years later. My mattress frame was $100, and the drawers and nightstand was a total of $150. I think I did pretty well if you are telling me.
Grocery Shopping
I would like to start by saying that I made a big mistake with grocery shopping when I moved to Florida. I shopped at Publix with the tight budget that I was on. Publix is the most common grocery store in Florida. I went to Publix because I was familiar with it until I realized that the prices were higher to compensate for the “shopping experience”. I go grocery shopping to buy food and leave — nothing else really matters to me. I discovered a grocery store called Winn Dixie. This store does not exist in New Jersey so I have never heard of it. At the time, I did not care about fancy food so Winn Dixie fit my needs. I eventually turned away from Winn Dixie and I will explain that in a future article.
BUDGET
Budgeting is a skill and when you learn how to improve your financing skills, a lot of your worries are going to go away. I use a budget sheet via excel, but there are so many amazing apps out there such as Mint, Clarity Money, GoodBudget, and PocketGuard.
I am going to leave you with this…
It is okay to feel scared.
Transitioning from living at home to living on your own can be stressful, but we all have to go through it. You go this. Enjoy living with freedom!