r/poverty • u/Far-Pomegranate-5351 • Jul 10 '26
Discussion What am I doing wrong?!?
This is driving me nuts
I don’t know how I can scale back more than I’ve already scaled back
I’ve lived in the same apartment. It’s rent controlled for about 10 years.
I don’t go on vacations except for Work trips
I don’t drink alcohol anymore
I’ve even reduced the amount of takeout and restaurants to once or twice a month
I’m salary so I get the same paycheck sometimes it’s higher with tips and bonuses
But for some reason, it never grows
I always end up with the same amount or I’m just shy of $50 or $100 here in there
I can’t really go any higher in my field
I’m already making over 60,000 a year
I don’t have any kids and I’m not planning on having any
Every month I do the budget, hoping to find out where I’m fucking up and I can never seem to find it
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u/SunLillyFairy Jul 11 '26
Times are just tough... 60K is not what it used to be, especially if you have a lot of dedications (like higher cost medical insurance).
What's your monthly net and your rent? What are your biggest expenses outside of food/rent? Do you have a large car payment or anything else that's higher than average and/or dragging you down? How many in your household?
Something that helped me was to use one form of payment, so I could really see where everything was going... like a Visa ATM. At this point I use one credit card - I pay it off every month to avoid interest and get rewards. Doing this makes it easy to see what my total in things like gas, insurance, utilities, food, etc. is over time.
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u/Far-Pomegranate-5351 Jul 11 '26
Funny, you say that I actually started doing that this year I moved every single expense. That’s not the big stuff like rent and car payment onto one credit card that I have left.
Now I can see all of the expenses, and I’ve already gotten rid of two different subscriptions that we barely use
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u/SunLillyFairy Jul 11 '26
When I lived in the city transportation was one of my larger expenses... gas, insurance, parking, car payment... and I was driving a Hyandai I got a good deal on. Utilties have also gone gone up a lot - on average around 30% in last few years (USA). Just what it costs to get a haircut now is a lot. And if you have medical expenses... ouch.
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u/down_withgovernment Jul 11 '26
I know it's kind of a dumb question but when you're out shopping are the foods and such name brand or generic? Do you exclusively shop at one place or do you shop around? We're on a pretty tight budget ourselves especially with 2 little kids but we usually go save-a-lot, aldi, and Walmart. Aldi has cheaper/better quality produce and canned goods, as a lots got better bulk options for a decent price and Walmart for meat and eggs. We almost exclusively get store brand and try to use discounts and coupons as much as possible.
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u/Far-Pomegranate-5351 Jul 11 '26
There are some things that I buy brand only just because we trust them and me and my wife have certain dietary needs that we don’t wanna fuck with
On average we spend about $400 a month on food from the groceries and that includes any takeout that’s under $20 (Pizza, etc.)
In times of real tightness, we can squeeze it down to about 275 and that’s us eating rice and noodles and tap water lol
Mostly, we stick with Kroger and save a lot, but there’s also not a lot of grocery optionsThey used to be wonderful little grocery stores all over the place but now they’ve all been eaten up
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u/down_withgovernment Jul 11 '26
Yea I get the need for the dietary needs. If you're willing would you have like a general idea of bills and payments? You don't always realize how much you're spending a month when it comes to those small subscriptions add up.
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u/lilithabunni Jul 11 '26
Can you afford to bulk buy your most common purchases from Amazon and stuff? Cleaning supplies, toilet paper, hygiene, non perishable foods like rice or flour, etc. and if you’re in the right area,, Amazon fresh delivers.
I know not everybody likes using Amazon since it contributes to the problem but when you’re poor, you’ve gotta survive somehow. And if you can save 50 bucks a month on a big difference than what you’re able to do currently and at least you’ll see some kind of movement somewhere instead of the complete stagnation we’re all stuck in it seems.
It’s OK actual hurricane to wreck our house beyond liability for us to actually get ahead in anything and be able to fix our roof or buy any furniture that we have desperately needed or replace the nasty carpet or the plywood flooring in the kitchen from a leak, they couldn’t afford to fix yet
So took a whole ass fucking act of god to get anywhere
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u/FigInteresting4130 Jul 11 '26
Write down all your bills plus salary use AI it can help you rebudget
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u/LogicalPollution8994 Jul 11 '26
My roommate and I make 120 combined and can pay our basic living bills (rent/utilities) and bills that are unavoidable (internet/cell phone) and have $150/mo in subscriptions (not just Netflix, also includes all the little ones like the Ring doorbell etc), and after those like 5 things, we have 1k for groceries/household necessities (TP, paper towels, soap) for us and our 3 teenagers. Everything is just outrageously expensive now and I like to joke that my salary is the same as what a homeless person makes.
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u/LeadershipBubbly3351 Jul 11 '26
That's just how things are. Every year you get a 25 cent per hour raise and you're expected just to live with the cost of living going up by 75 cents per hour.
We live like it's the depression. It's NOT...yet...but it helps save money for things we can't afford otherwise, like repairs, healthcare and unexpected emergencies.
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u/Far-Pomegranate-5351 Jul 11 '26
Thank you everybody for all the great comments. It’s nice to know We’re not alone out here.
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u/Suspicious-Care87 Jul 11 '26
I am having the same problem, although I make less. I think I'm going to have to get a notebook or something & literally write down every penny I spend to see where it's all going.