Managing your finances on a minimum wage

dellas1979

Just want a rant really.

Just got paid there midnight and my account is almost empty already. I earn a minimum wage. Have been through educational system, work experience and cant get a decent paid job, try as I may.

How do you/would you manage your finances on a minimum wage? I need to make savings, but at the moment, most I could put in a week is €10! Any tips? How do you manage your finances?

Kinetic^

Well you should really give us an idea of what your overheads are, like rent or mortgage, stuff like that, not the figures, just what the money is spent on.

TempestSabre

You need to do a balance sheet listing you income and outgoings. That will show you where your money is going and were best you can make savings.

Cyrus

whats your educational background? and what work experience do u have

whiskeyman

Firstly, fair play to you for working on a low wages... many simply wouldnt bother.

Now that your there, check and see if you're available for other social welfare benefits.

Best of luck.

dellas1979

Thanks for the replies!

I will do that budget. Will have to get out the pen and paper (no computer except at work!Ha!)

I have third level, up to post-grad level, education. Starting to think college was a waste of time. Wouldnt discourage it, but be careful what you pick!

Tried to get jobs in what I went to college for, but its literally impossible. They all want 5yrs+ experience! To be honest, employers can choose to be choosy. There are so many qualified and experience people out there.

Am mid-twenties now. Worked all the way through college too.

Am thinking will be stuck in a minimum paid job for quite a while, putting €10 away a week! Better than nothing I guess, but its so hard worrying about money and future all the time.

Thanks again.

irishguy

What did you do in college? Would you think of going on a graduate program or joining the civil service?

Savman

dellas1979 wrote:

Just want a rant really.

Just got paid there midnight and my account is almost empty already. I earn a minimum wage. Have been through educational system, work experience and cant get a decent paid job, try as I may.

How do you/would you manage your finances on a minimum wage? I need to make savings, but at the moment, most I could put in a week is €10! Any tips? How do you manage your finances?

I know the feeling :rolleyes:
I dunno about all the Celtic Tiger talk, there seems to be a lot of people stuck in this financial mire, houses above €300k, cars above €20k I dunno how people are driving 06 Mercs and buyin 1 bed apartments for €1.5m

If it wasn't for bad credit I wouldn't have no credit at all!

TempestSabre

Savman wrote:

I know the feeling :rolleyes:
I dunno about all the Celtic Tiger talk, there seems to be a lot of people stuck in this financial mire, houses above €300k, cars above €20k I dunno how people are driving 06 Mercs and buyin 1 bed apartments for €1.5m....

Good practise to really examine how people manage this. Its an education.

daveirl

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lomb

daveirl wrote:

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nah, banks need to be paid. a 1.5 million mortgage over 25 years is about 6-8 grand a month. and remember u need to make twice that to pay the tax on it to meet the mortgage commitment.

theres just alot of smart high earners out there who put what they made into property and every time they had spare money they bought another unit. thats the 'sad' truth about it.

to the op, dont worry too much, minimum wage is designed so u cant save anything. u need to find an oportunity to make more money like a part time job or business or something. usually most people in their twenties are broke, but as the years move on u tend to get richer through various things like inheritance, higher paying more responsible jobs and careful budgeting, and property mortgages being eroded by inflation. enjoy ur youth while u have it!

Cyrus

daveirl wrote:

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not really if you are smart about it, property prices are rising higher than most people can save, makes no sense not to borrow if its in dublin especially

daveirl

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Cyrus

you sure they dont them, i have a verbal agreement from either aib or ub, prolly ub then (dunno got my dad to sort it)

property in south county dublin and parts of north dublin will not drop in value barring a massive recession, i doubt we'll see a drop in the next 20 yrs (in the locations mentioned)

daveirl

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Cyrus

i have no crystal ball,

the shortage of suitable sites in south county dublin, which is generally the most desirable part of the city to live in means that prices will not fall barring a total decimation of the economy, its not an opinion its a fact

lomb

Cyrus wrote:

i have no crystal ball,

the shortage of suitable sites in south county dublin, which is generally the most desirable part of the city to live in means that prices will not fall barring a total decimation of the economy, its not an opinion its a fact

the funny thing is u are probably right..

seamus

Cyrus wrote:

the shortage of suitable sites in south county dublin, which is generally the most desirable part of the city to live in means that prices will not fall barring a total decimation of the economy, its not an opinion its a fact

While house prices are generally based upon supply and demand, here they are artificially inflated by the availability of credit. The availability of credit actually causes prices to rise in two ways - everyone can outbid the next guy because the bank is dying to lend to them, and people can buy second or third homes based on the existence of their current home(s). This serves to overprice existing housing.

The stability of the housing market here though is no longer floating on the economies of supply and demand. It's floating on the lending. Any sudden, largeish (it doesn't have to be massive) change in interest rates in Europe, and the whole thing could come crashing down. Similarly any major worldwide events, such as a war causing a big dip in oil production, could leave borrowers with huge debts and little equity to back it up.

It's a complete fallacy to believe that the housing market will continue on for another generation. The only uncertainty is whether the bubble will burst or nicely subside.

Google for some info on the collapse of the housing markets in London and Japan. Both occured relatively recently to be relevant.

lomb

without getting down to irrelevent things, regardless of a banks willingness to lend money, banks have to be paid. have u put say a 600 grand loan into a mortgage calculator, over 10,15, 20, and 25 years and stress tested it by 2 per cent. well banks wont loan money without doing this(i hope)
its a surprisingly large amount. now put 1.5 million into the calculator and there are LOADS of houses in dublin that sell for this every week. its a shocking amount of money,ok existing equity makes up a large part of it but i guess people must have it

seamus

But people don't have it. That's the problem. Irish people last year borrowed more than they earned. As a nation, we are financially in the red. We're borrowing more money than we have available to us.

The bank is only interested in your ability to pay them back the money. Whether 1.5 million is too much for one person is irrelevant. So long as you can show them that they'll get their interest out of you, they're happy. I know one guy who worked short (but well paid) contracts in the entertainment industry. Solo, the banks wouldn't touch him as he had no stable income. But he made the case to the bank for a €600,000 loan that would be mostly paid off through rent. And he got it.

daveirl

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frost

External circumstances can't be avoided and it's hard to have much impact on them. However, something you *can* change is your own expectations and consumption habits.

It isn't easy to redefine what you now consider "necessities" to be "frills", but it can be done over time, and is very freeing.

That said, it's not a particularly easy road to travel (I'm a ways down it after several years).