hadjiboy, as much as I would be happy to fill you in, a double income, mortgage and car payments, plus day care costs, are not in the same universe as your setup!

Way too personal. I'm astonished that your electricity costs so much. Is that a weekly wage? I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I can easily spend the amount you spend on a weekends entertainment.

5,000: Meal and drinks for 2 on Friday night.
2,000: Sunday Alcohol.
300: DVD Rental
600: cigarettes.
500: Taxi
1,000: Takeaway.
500: Saturday cans of Beer.

And I live in one of the cheaper parts of the UK.

Minimum wage in the UK is about 460 Rupees an hour. So, (Taking a 40 hour week), the minimum weekly wage is 18,400 Rupees a week.

About half my take-home goes on the mortgage, water, power and council (local) tax. That's about par for the course in the UK, the cost of property (whether buying or renting) being what it is.

Insurances (car, home, cats, plumbing, central heating) are around £70 a month.

I divert £150 direct into a savings account.

I spend about £200 a month on food, I fill up the car once a month (costs £40, but I don't go too far in it) and my travel to work on the trains costs £8.40 (I'm only in 3 days a week, and I travel early, so it's only £2.80 a day).

I pay around £50 a month for my broadband connection and satellite TV.

I have just joined a gym, at £47 a month and apart from that, I don't have any extravagant hobbies.

There's usually money over at the end of the month. That goes into my holiday fund, or I might pay an extra £100 off the mortgage each month, help speed up the day when I don't co-own this place with the bank.

half goes to hookers, the other half to drugs.

90% spending
10% saving

half goes to hookers, the other half to drugs.

now I know how he spends his days

I don't really think this is a terribly personal question, so:

Natural gas for the water heater & furnace: $20 in the summer, up to $40 in the winter
Rent: $275 (although it's jumping up to $600 starting in May :-( )
Internets: $60 fuck you very much Comcast Cable you fuckers
Public Transit pass: $64
Cigarettes: $140
Electricity: $10
Water: $40
Beer: $150

And the remainder I save for food, travelling, and synthesizers.

Is that a weekly wage?

I wish! No, we get paid every month over here. Although 9,500 a month seems paltry compared to the 75, 000 odd rupees I’d be getting over there. Man, it’s no wonder everyone’s fighting to outsource their work here.

richat, my finances are a bit complex too; I live with my parents, so I don’t have to pay any rent, and neither do they (we have our own house), but I like to chip in with whatever I can, hence the food and groceries. I don’t have many friends, so I usually go out with my mom or sis to the movies or Subways.

Although, there is a girl I have a crush on who I’ll be asking out soon. It’s not anything serious (she’s not looking to get involved, and I don’t know if I can—she’s a strict Catholic, and my mother would have a cow if I planned on doing anything serious with her, so, ya know.)

But I am planning to ask her out hopefully. Let’s see how that works out.

It’s astonishing how cheep electricity is over there.

Your electric bill is one-fifth of your gross income?

Damn. I pay the equivalent of one hour and fifteen minutes' wages for electricity. I am a single guy living in a studio apartment so my costs aren't that representative. But you get the idea.

I'm not going to get too specific about my income but I will talk a little bit about my costs. Let's just say that my rent here in Queens, New York takes up about 45% of my after-taxes income. I pay $76 a month for a 30-day transit pass. I started preparing my own lunches because I was sick of paying $7.50 for a crappy fast-food meal in midtown Manhattan. And that's the low end. You can get cart food for $6 with a Coke but cart food can result in spending all afternoon on the toilet. So I stay away from cart food. I have paid $9.00 for a mediocre lunch just to stay away from the "would you like fries with that?" establishments. A typical pint -- that is, of a grown-up beer I would actually drink in public -- in Manhattan will run you about $6. And I am really unhappy about this.

I pay c. $18-22 to have my laundry done which is a pretty good price compared to paying $8-9 to do it myself at the same laundromat.

(42.42 Rupees to the dollar)

So . . . 3223 Rupees for a monthly transit pass, 318 Rupees for a fast-food meal, 763+ Rupees to have laundry done by someone else.

jason you need to move out here. i thought boulder was expensive but manhattan is obscene.

hm. hadji let's just say i make about 7x per month what you do, and i am in no way wealthy.

$450 goes to rent (that's half of a large 2 bedroom apt shared with my roommate)
i don't buy a transit pass, but it would cost me around $140 if I did (regional pass)
$35-50/month electricity/gas (water/trash/maintenance are all paid by the rental co.)
hm, don't have a car anymore.
don't pay internet (there are six or seven strong, open wireless signals near our apt.)
don't have cable.
... so the rest goes to groceries, fun and my IRA fund. i try to put back at least $100 to $150 per month to savings.

Of our (combined) net monthly income:

22% goes to rent (we are in subsidised housing from mr. g's hospital)
15% goes to repaying my student loan
13% goes to retirement savings accounts
10% to entertainment, birthday presents, eating out, alcohol, etc.
6% goes to mr. g's student loan
6% to food we cook at home
4% to a CD account
4% to transit passes
3.5% to cable, internet, phone, electricity bills

Then the last 13.5% gets spent on one-off expenses (there are always some, this month it was paying taxes) and the rest goes into paying extra on my student loan.

jason’s_planet: A typical fast food meal (let’s say a Mc Donald’s with fries and Coke) will cost you 100 Rupees, a Subway Special, a 50, a Pizza (Medium Size) about 200 Rupees. So, it is kind of expensive, but not as expensive as it would be if you converted the currency from Dollar to Rupee.

Man, that would mean (a cinema ticket costs 12 dollars there right?) would cost me 500 bucks per person, and right now it’s costing me that much to buy three tickets and whatever else we’d like to munch on in the meantime.

Wow. My electric here in Chicago is about $13/month and this after ComEd was finally allowed to raise rates after a ten-year rate freeze. Granted, that's winter, with no window units running (my condo is 80 years old and right on the Lake, so I don't need the a/c until we start breaking 95 for several days in a row), and my gas (heat & water heater) is included in assessments. But wow. I'm sure we're paying some sort of environmental and karmic price for such cheap electricity.

"half goes to hookers, the other half to drugs"

and half goes to drugs for the hookers.

In a month ...

$425 - rent
$70 - natural gas
$60 - electricity
%60 - rent for band's practice space
$100 - cigarettes
$100 - food
$50 - booze
$20 - cat stuff
$42 - public transportation

source of income - student loans

Ooops. That's $60.

heh. jonmc has to drug his hookers.

Mortgage: $637.00
Rent: $455.00 (because it's a manufactured home. We own the home, rent the lot).
Phone: $18.00 a month (it's cable)
Cable: $125.00 (tv and computer)
Elec: $60.00 average.
Gas: $60.00 average.
Car: $375.00 (one year to go! Hubby has a company vehicle)
Car Insurance: $98.00 seven times a year.
Food: $250-300.00 a week (we have three teenagers)
Savings: Me, $40.00 a week, hubby $30.00 a week
Cells: Hubby pays, I don't even know. We have four lines.

I live alone in Somerville, MA now.

After tax expenses:

Rent 25%
Cooking Gas .5%
Electricity 1%
Mobile Phone 1.5%
Car+Insurance 10%
Heating oil 4%
Gasoline 1.5%
Groceries 4.5%
Total: 48% of after tax income for bills

Some of my fixed expenses:

*$900 a month for rent (I live alone)
*$70 a month for the gym (money well spent, IMO- I feel great)
*$76 a month for the subway/bus
*~$40 a month for cell phone (sometimes I go over on text messages- like this month, oops!)
*$30 a month for internet (I have a package with internet and land line, and my company pays for the land line so I can work from home)

Electricity and gas are included with the rent, yaaay.

As for the rest of it, a chunk goes to savings, a chunk goes to charity, and who knows where the rest of it goes.

jason you need to move out here. i thought boulder was expensive but manhattan is obscene.

Yeah, it is. What can I say? Staying here is totally irrational. I stay because I love the place. But thanks for the suggestion.

jason’s_planet: A typical fast food meal (let’s say a Mc Donald’s with fries and Coke) will cost you 100 Rupees, a Subway Special, a 50, a Pizza (Medium Size) about 200 Rupees. So, it is kind of expensive, but not as expensive as it would be if you converted the currency from Dollar to Rupee.

I'm surprised that that fast food is so expensive in India. Just curious -- how much does it cost to hire a Tiffin Wallah to deliver lunch from home?

Yeah, movie tickets are extremely pricey in New York. The cost of tickets has created an illegal trade in videotapes/DVDs. The counterfeiters will send guys with small, easily concealed videocameras into the theater and tape the first-run movie while it is playing. They market these tapes in poor and working-class neighborhoods where people can't afford a family night at the movies, at current ticket prices. People will call up the Tape Man's cellphone and he'll show up with a copy of the movie that's playing in the theaters. I've had coworkers who patronized Tape Men. They said that they were very happy with the service, that the Tape Men would readily replace low-quality videos.

We don’t have Dabba Wallahs in Hyderabad (where I live) as such, they’re more concentrated to the Mumbai/Bombay area, but it would be fairly cheap I suppose (not more than 100 Rupees I’m guessing). I can find out for you if you want.
Yup, heard about those tape men (Seinfeld did an episode about that, didn’t he), and have even watched a few of their movies, but I’ve always found them to be of poor quality. The DVD stores over here (the major ones at least), recently decided not to have any of these in their collection anymore, and to only deal in originals, as a crack-down in Piracy. It’s good, but you have to wait forever to see the most current releases.

I suppose not more than 100 Rupees

That might be a little too cheap, on second thought.

but it would be fairly cheap I suppose (not more than 100 Rupees I’m guessing). I can find out for you if you want.

Eh, don't worry about it. I'll take your word for it.

Thanks!

heh. jonmc has to drug his hookers.

They demand the drugs first.