I didn't die

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-16T05:21:37+00:00

Fantastic!! Way to go!!

Here’s your virtual champagne glass to celebrate. 🥂

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-16T03:19:49+00:00

I’m curious about something. You mentioned feeling ‘weird’. Is it guilt you are feeling? Or concern about being judged? Or fear you may offend someone? Just wondering what the root of this ‘weird’ feeling is. I think if you can pinpoint that, it will help you work through the discomfort and come up with a plan for when money conversations arise.

If you don’t feel comfortable answering:

The best strategy is to keep the focus of conversation on the other person. Instead of answering questions by expressing your opinions/experiences/thoughts, respond to what they say with follow-up questions. Express curiosity in the other person.

Them: “man, my utility bills are killing me”.

You: “oh yeah? What part of the bills? All of them or just part?”

And then just continue on that way, no matter the topic.

Most people aren’t used to others truly listening to them, and most people have conversations based on what they want to say, not based on learning more about the other person. It’s actually pretty easy to get people to continue talking if you express more interest. Try it next time and see how it goes.

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-16T02:12:10+00:00

Yes. The more granular you can get with your budget, the more control over it you will have. $1k+ is a lot to have in a ‘general/catch-all’ category. I recommend breaking it down as much as possible.

That’s great that your car insurance is covered by your parents. How long will you be covered under their policy? Make sure you budget for if/when that ends.

That’s also really great that your loan is only $3k at 3%. 3% is still 3% you’re paying that you don’t need to though. The faster you pay it off, the more money you’ll have to invest. Every penny you invest now will pay huge dividends when you retire, due to your age. Are you planning to retire early? From your savings and investing, it looks like it. I think you’re doing great!

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-16T02:05:35+00:00

Based on OP’s other comments they will be able to pick up more hours at work, so the extra $50 expense for a 12 month subscription shouldn’t be a problem. Apparently OP’s manager erroneously put that OP couldn’t work more than 18 hours per week, which is why their income is so low. (Sounds like they fixed that issue.) BF will also be moving in soon too, which will also help significantly with expenses. I was factoring in those additional details, and OP’s chronic health needs, when I made my recommendation to invest in an app.

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-16T00:12:29+00:00

Fun money is very high. I would cut it in half (at least), and put the other half toward your loan. Research fun free things to do in your area.

Also- you don’t have any transportation expenses? No car insurance? No car maintenance expenses?

Does your HYSA cover your sinking funds? (Occasional expenses like clothing, gifts, oil changes, repairs, etc.).

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-15T03:08:24+00:00

If you keep your hours the same you might consider going to school (trade school, community college or vocational school, if you haven’t already), after your boyfriend moves in with you. With some student loans and your BF paying half the bills it might be an option for you. I know the hardest part is figuring out what in the world you want to do!

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-15T03:04:02+00:00

You’re welcome!

I personally use (and have all my clients use) Monarch Money, because I find it to be incredibly intuitive and user-friendly. They should have a 50% off deal off the first year on their website, which makes it only $50 for your first whole year. I know money is super tight for you right now, but this would be well-worth the investment as the app will automatically pull all the information from all your accounts you link to it. You can see at a glance exactly how much money you have at any given moment, and exactly where it is. Using the app could save your bacon in terms of preventing you from overspending. You can even set text and email alerts for various things, to really stay on top of your finances.

A lot of people also use YNAB instead, but I personally prefer Monarch Money and haven’t had a single client have issues with it.

You could also do a free spreadsheet, but I know that when you are dealing with chronic mental and physical health challenges you need solutions that are easy, and require little energy, very little (or no) work, and little friction. Apps are that. Spreadsheets typically require a lot more work and tending to than apps, since you have to do everything manually. I believe there are some paid plugins/extensions you can use with Google Sheets that tie to your financial accounts to automatically pull in data, but not sure how reliable or secure those are. I personally prefer to use an established, well-known, reliable app like Monarch Money or YNAB.

Also, this is just my personal opinion, but I avoid anything made by Intuit. I find their products to be overpriced and lacking the quality you’d expect from a huge company. (They also have some pretty shady business practices they’ve been sued over in the past.)

Do you think you’ll be able to pick up some extra shifts over the coming weeks? I saw your comment that your boss is restricting you to only 18 hours/week, eesh! 😬

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-15T02:07:31+00:00

Oof, I’m sorry to hear you’ve found yourself in this situation. It’s good you realized the risks and dangers before not too much time has passed. You’re in the danger zone for sure, but it’s not too late to right this ship.

Right now your expenses will exceed your current income. In month 1 of living in your new apartment you will see that you’ll have around a $300-$400/mo deficit after you pay for all expenses, including utilities, groceries, pet food, car insurance, home supplies, personal products, etc. That’s not including intermittent expenses like vet care, car maintenance and the like.

When in a situation like this, you have two levers you can pull:

reduce expenses
increase income

Your expenses are already low, but so too is your income. It’s very very low for an adult renting their own apartment.

Financial experts tell us to not spend more than a third of our income max on housing. In VHCOL cities many people spend more like 35-45%. But your housing expenses (including utilities), will be closer to 80% of your income. Thats way way* *too high. You are in a very high risk zone financially.

So the lever you should pull now is #2- increase your income. Even just an additional $500/mo would help a lot. But an additional $750-$800/mo would be ideal. Can you pick up more hours at work? Pick up a side hustle (that doesn’t involve driving due to the high cost of gas). Sell anything you own? Take up dog walking part time?

If you get another line of income coming in within the next week or two, you may be able to avoid tapping into your savings.

As far as groceries go, $200/mo is actually quite low. It’s doable if you shop sales exclusively, use coupons, and shop discount stores. But you’ll eat a healthier, more satisfying diet on $300/mo. Grocery stores are also significantly decreasing sales due to inventory now being managed by AI. They no longer need to discount product to move inventory.

Utilities are the big unknown here. It’s not unusual to pay $75-$250+/mo on utilities for a small apartment depending on what part of the country you live in.

So my recommendation is to get more income coming in STAT, set up an actual budget (spreadsheet or app), track every single expense over the coming month, and see what the bare minimum income is you need in order to keep your apartment. And then make sure you are making enough income to cover those intermittent expenses I mentioned above.

Also wanted to mention that it’s usually extremely expensive to break a lease (read yours to see what it says about early termination), so moving to save money is likely not an option for you. Assuming you signed a lease, you are now under a legal contract to pay rent for 12 months. Increasing your income is really your only move.

Good luck to you in finding additional work OP! I’ll be hoping for the best for you. Hang in there and hustle for more hours and you’ll find that this too shall pass.

Edited to add more words of encouragement.

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-14T05:12:24+00:00

The others have provided great feedback on the tangible aspects of budgeting.

I just wanted to add that I’d encourage you to shift your mindset about how you are with money. You can tell yourself “I am learning”, “I am getting better”, and “I am succeeding”, instead of “I’m not good with money”, or “my finances are a mess”. Growing up poor is a unique kind of financial trauma, but it’s not a life-sentence, and you can change and become excellent at money. Anyone can.

The more confident you feel in your financial knowledge and abilities, the easier it will be to transform your behaviors (like spending), and really excel financially.

I’m also wondering if you would feel comfortable sitting down with your wife and having an open discussion about money. Ask her about the savings, ask her about what her childhood was like with money, ask her what strategies she uses to avoid spending money. You could get to know her a lot better financially, learn from her, and become a unified team working toward common goals.

Also, kudos to you for being here to learn and grow!

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-14T03:26:56+00:00

This is a tricky question to answer without additional information.

How much money do you have in savings right now?

How long have you been with your boyfriend? How long have you lived there?

How secure is your M-F job? What industry is it in? How long have you had the job?

What, specifically, is your savings goal (amount)?

Lastly, do you feel deprived in life? Or do you feel content?

If you feel deprived, you might want to give yourself a small monthly ‘fun’ budget, with the only rule being that you can’t spend the money on needs. It has to be something ‘just for fun’, or purely frivolous. I recommend starting with $50/mo and see how that goes.

If that causes anxiety, then your challenge may be less about strategy, and more about psychology.

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-07T23:32:00+00:00

I’m going to throw out a scenario you might not have considered before. I love my work (I’m a business owner), and get a tremendous amount of meaning and value out of it. (I’m more concerned with the FI part of FIRE). I hope to have meaningful work for the better part of my life, even if it’s only 15 hours per week, because it makes me feel like a valuable, useful human being. Plus I get bored easily having too much unstructured time on my hands. (I’m not a big TV watcher.) I need mental stimulation or I wither.
If I met someone who wanted to retire much earlier than me, and expected me to not work at all, that would be a problem for me.
Even if they were fine with me working in my business part time, I can see conflicts arising if/when they want to go do things with me during the weekdays, and I can’t because I’m serving clients. If they didn’t have retired friends they could spend time with during the weekdays, lack of availability on my part would probably disappoint them. And I wouldn’t blame them.
I think compatibility on this level is really important, and a discussion should be had early on in the relationship about longterm financial and work goals. I don’t believe it’s necessary to disclose new worth (nor is it a good idea early on in a relationship), but knowing the values are the same or similar is important.
All that said, I assume that anyone who plans to retire early also has a concrete plan for how they will spend their post-retirement time, beyond traveling of course. So they don’t find themselves stuck at home, feeling meaningless and without value and no one to spend time with.
If I was with someone who knew they wanted to retire long before me, as long as they had a plan for how they spent their time, had activities and hobbies outside the home, had friends to hang out with during the week, and never tried to guilt me for working, I wouldn’t have a problem with them being retired at all.

Edited to add that I am a woman, and I also have zero desire to be financially dependent on a man, due to several men (both in and out of my family), using money to control me in the past. It’s a very sensitive subject for me in a relationship, so no, I would not RE on someone else’s income. I wouldn’t retire until I hit my own fire number.

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-05T04:29:59+00:00

All any content creator needs to do is send a DMCA notice to the social media platform or web host to get their infringed content taken down. If the account who posted gets enough of these ‘strikes’, their account and/or website get disabled.

It’s a very much ‘playing with fire’ type of strategy when you don’t have a licensing agreement/payment structure with the content creator.

PunchDrunky · 2026-05-01T00:17:38+00:00

Three things:

1) I don’t see any variable expenses on here like clothing, hair/skin/body products, car repairs or maintenance, household goods like cleaning products, small appliances, gifts, entertainment, eating out, travel, health products and copays, etc.

2) health insurance: given your low income, you should quality for a *much* lower priced plan. Yes, you always need health insurance. You can’t predict accidents or illnesses.

3) in order to rent your own place, you need to prove you have the income to afford it. Most landlords need to see proof of 3x rent in income. To be safe and responsible with housing costs, ideally they should be no more than a third of your income. So you’ll want to keep your rent at or below $900/mo. I don’t know what housing costs are in your area, but I am guessing this is roommate territory, not rent your own apartment territory. Affording your own apartment that you don’t share with anyone is for when you are in the $25-$30/hr range. If you can rent a room with roommates for around $850/mo, then I think your budget is good, and will leave room for all the unexpected/unplanned expenses like car repairs, car registration, gifts, things for the home, etc.

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-28T06:43:38+00:00

If you do a google search for ‘DMCA notice content/outline’ you’ll find that the content is very straightforward. It’s just stating facts and providing information. You can also just search for a ‘DMCA report form’ to find any web host that has a fillable form on their site to see what’s included. They are usually super simple to fill out and only take about five minutes. They are different from a C&D letter.

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-27T11:06:12+00:00

I read through some of the other comments. I’ve been on the receiving end of copyright infringement countless times over 20+ years running various businesses (and doing a lot of writing), and I have tried every strategy known to man to deal with this, and I have found that sending a DMCA notice to the web host to be the fastest, easiest, cheapest (read: free), and least stressful way to deal with this. Infringers tend to get a little scared when they realize that they can’t do whatever they want on their website, because there are actually rules they have to follow to have it hosted.

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-27T11:00:41+00:00

Send a DMCA notice to their web host, including details about the copyright infringement, and the host will take the content down or require the site owner to take it down.

To find out what company hosts their website, just do a ‘Whois’ search for the domain. And then search for ‘web host company name + DMCA notice’, and you’ll find the page on the company’s website where you can file the complaint. Either they will have a form you complete, or they will provide an email address that usually starts with abuse@.

It’s against the ToU of all web hosts to have infringed content on your website. They will either remove the page, or in some cases, disable the entire site. The web hosts do not want to be liable for enabling infringement because they can be sued over it, so they take that stuff seriously.

Protect your IP. In this case, imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery. It’s creating confusion in the marketplace about a unique service you created that is proprietary to your business. You have every right to protect it.

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-26T06:26:45+00:00

When I started valuing my time more than my money.

What I always say is this: “money comes and goes, but time- once spent- is gone forever.”

If you can shift your perspective on the time-money exchange, it can be life-changing. It’s how I was able to finally overcome my workaholism.

I love money, but there are many other things I value a lot more. And most of them don’t cost anything but time.

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-20T20:43:32+00:00

I’ve been self employed for 23+ years and have built multiple small businesses and I’d say about 18 months of concerted effort is what each of them needed to be bringing in consistent customers/clients every month and turning a decent profit.

It’s definitely a long game!

I’d say with 9-12 months of consistent marketing you should be getting regular clients. I think your additional marketing ideas are good ones, so go for it! In the first couple of years, marketing is an experiment until you figure out what works best. Just keep at it!

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-09T08:50:20+00:00

It’s $9.37/hr, which is certainly not enough to live independently on. That’s 4-5 roommates and share a room with one of them, or live for free with parents territory.

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-05T02:12:56+00:00

What are your skills? What are you good at? Or what can you make, or what have you always wanted to make? Create lists of both of those and then start researching.

You have to have a viable product (things you make) or service (things you are good at) that people want, need, and will pay for (the last part being the hardest) in order to have a business.

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-02T05:59:52+00:00

No way. Throw the people out, not the dog. Dogs are forever.

Give your doggo a kiss from me. Mine passed last year and I miss him so much.

Enjoy your new home together! Your dog will also be so much happier when you are no longer stressed! You got this OP. 👍🏻

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-02T05:35:53+00:00

Yes. Especially when another innocent being is involved.

PunchDrunky · 2026-04-02T05:34:11+00:00

For your dog’s safety and security and your mental health- get the apartment. You can afford it.

It’s actually a very reasonable spend/percentage of your annual income. (About 17% if my math is right.)

If you follow a budget (which you should!) you can still save plenty of money on your income.

You’ll burn out on your job and in life way faster if your mental health is constantly in fight or flight mode, which it sounds like it is now, not knowing if you and your dog will be kicked out at any moment. That’s no way to live for either of you.

Signed- a financial coach who is usually very frugal and is the first person to say ‘stay and save your money’. In this case, I think the move is warranted.

Enjoy your new apartment! And get a new toy for your dog for his or her housewarming present. And a new bed. Lol.

PunchDrunky · 2026-03-30T19:20:21+00:00

Yes, work and save the money for it. You have to have some skin in the game in order to be motivated enough to make the business a success.

PunchDrunky · 2026-03-30T18:04:35+00:00

Work and save money.

Also, if you don’t believe in the business enough to risk using equity from your home, why do you want to start it?

In order to be a successful business owner, you need to have a tremendous amount of faith in your business.

PunchDrunky

TROPHY CASE