I did not expect you, as someone that worked on Wall Street, to separate those things out from work. smh...

RP - on the company's dime I am in...on my own no chance

VK - I have made a lot of money staking...but I have turned down and not staked way way more than I have chosen to back. Most think staking is an ez game...just sit back and print $. Nope - there is a reason why people need a stake and a massive percentage of the time they should not be backed.

From your PG&C thread:

These numbers boggle my mind a bit. $500 a month on groceries doesn't include going out to eat/drink or eating at the casino, right? I think you could cut back a ton on food. I don't know how poker comps in Vegas work, but get a comp when you can and otherwise eat out rarely or eat at home. I don't understand how you can spend $500 on groceries if you're living alone. Are you having a juicy rib eye every morning for breakfast?

How do you spend that much on gas? You live in Vegas, right? Are you travelling to other places a lot?

$2k for leisurely stuff is excessive. You are in the bankroll building stage and you just can't afford this stuff. If your win-rate is $30/h and you play 180 hours in a month then you are only making $5400/month, but you are spending $4000/month for an adjusted win-rate of ~$8/h. With such little growth the impact on RoR is very significant. If you are playing 2|5 with a $500/h SD then with the $44,000 bankroll you suggested your RoR is going to be about 5%, which would not be acceptable to me. If you cut expenses down to $2000/month, though, your RoR with the same bankroll and SD becomes about .1%.

That entire list is basically a wtf are you doing

700/month for Rent/electric, ok seems reasonable

500/month for a single person to eat is absurd. I have a family of 4 (granted small children) and we probably spend 500/month

300/ month for car insurance?!? 3600/year?!? I live in NJ which has notoriously high insurance rates, I pay less than 2k for 2 cars. You literally shouldn't be paying over 1000/year and that's not because I'm just dividing by 2, that's because there are plenty of companies to shop around with

200/month cell phone?!? Lol. ****ing millenials. Jfc dude, do you just see the most expensive **** and try to get on hook for it? Wife and I both have newest iPhones, we don't pay anything near 200/month

200/month gas, yet you uber everywhere??? Buy a ****ing bike, you live in the desert, it never rains. The rate for gas in LV is currently like 2.20 gallon. Let's say 2.30/gallon and you have a car that gets lol15mpg. You could buy 86 gallons of gas and drive 1300 miles. That's 40+ miles a day. And that's a normal commute, but if you want to life nit it up, look for ways to lower this cost

75/month for Internet is fine

I pay $700 per month for groceries for 3 people and we eat well and live in a high cost of living area
I pay $275 for car insurance for 3 people (one of whom is 17. It was less than 1/2 of that before he started driving)
I pay $211 for cell phone for 3 people (iphones and unlimited data)
I pay $45 for internet
$2000/month for "leisurely stuff"????? Are you serious? You going skydiving twice a week or what?


Your bills are way to high.

+1

In all seriousness, I could sit VK down for BigSkip's Ballin' on a Budget class and within two years he would have a significant difference in his life roll.

My monthly expenses come in around $2200 but that includes a house payment with extra equity added to it.

What is your mortgage, $700?!?

$828 with the extra.
Bought low, paid it down, and then refi'd low again.

I can't really harp on his internet bill. Internet is one of those things that a lot of times it is what it is. People are lucky if they have more than 1 provider to chose from and the Internet companies know it so they charge what they want. If VK is lucky enough to have more than 1 company to choose from, obv pit them against each other or switch. I have Verizon and Comcast and we switch yearly (though to technically be a "new customer" to get the deals is apparently only 4 months of not being a customer), but not everyone is that lucky

Yeah, that budgeting is pretty absurd.

$700 for rent seems normal, but probably could cut that down by sharing a 2 bedroom place with a roommate.

$500 in groceries for a single person in a month is absurd, especially when you saw that you're eating out often. This shouldn't be any more than $200 per month or so, and even that is fairly high. Are you eating steak and lobster every night?

$300 per month for car insurance is nuts as well, I pay $100 / mo in CA as a late-20s male and think that my insurance is pretty high. Unless you have a seriously terrible driving record, or are driving a Ferrari, this should be able to be cut way down.

$200 for cell service is ridiculous as well, you can easily pay half that (or less) and still get a ton of minutes / data per month with a nice phone.

$200 for gas is pretty excessive as well, gas is like $2 / gallon in Vegas so that's ~100 gallons per month. Unless you're frequently going on long road trips, there's no way you should be using that much gas. Maybe you are driving Ferrari after all?

$75 per month for internet seems high as well, I'm paying $35 / mo for high speed internet in LA, so I can't imagine that you can't get a better deal in Vegas. If this includes some sort of cable TV service as well, then OK. This is dependent on the options in your area though, as I was able to choose from several different ISPs.

If you want to be a life nit, you can easily cut $800-$900 off the above just by cutting down on your excesses and shopping around a bit.

If it's your main source of income then it is both assuming you aren't claining it on your taxes which for someone who needs the distinction made I'll assume is a foregone conclusion.

I was going to say that some of us skew the average up quite a bit but then I realized you said median


Sadly, he's not really all that young.

I believe he is paying for a family plan or something. Taking care of others cell phone bill.

I need to start this budgeting stuff too. I eat out every meal and $700 is about what I spend (I only eat 2 meals a day). My dogs only eat about $200 of food each month so not too bad.

Until you start renting out rooms in your house for $700+/each you'll never be on my level.

And for that I thank Jeebus every night.

Can I post my bills to be analyzed next?

me first, heres what i got over the last 5 weeks

Alcohol: $160.00
Amazon: $138.20
Car Insurance: $285.51
Dates w/ Jen: $705.50
Food: $223.00
Furniture: $65.00
Gambling: (-$746.00)
Gas: $127.50
Gifts: $208.50
Grocery: $387.00
Headphones: $54.00
Laundry: $7.00
Netflix/Hulu/XM: $48.00
Poker Coaching: $318.98
Rent: $1,593.00
Shoes: $21.00
Shopping: $308.00
Snoopy Stuff: $147.00
Student Debt: $100.00
Table Expenses: $114.00
Travel: $383.00
Weed: $250.00

totals just under $5k

not really lookin for advice, just criticism please. and keep it coming

Snoopy stuff???

dog food, dog sitting, leashes, collars, doggie clothes, toys, doggie shoes, hmmm i think that covers all the snoopy stuff

7 bux on laundry? over a 5 week period!!!!

Yeah it's on the high side for a poker player.

Having roommates is grrrrrrrrrrreat!

Pretty impressed that you have been tracking all this and it looks like a good starting point to creating a budget. I expect "snoopy stuff" will not generally cost you that much. Sounds like you incurred a lot of one time costs there. Although, you will have vet bills from time to time too.

Is this high or low?

you realize you're spending almost $5000/year on substance abuse?

Legit thought you were buying like Peanuts Snoopy stuff.

Is this high or low?

About 6 months ago my wife and I started budgeting extensively. We sit down at the start of the month and map out to the dollar where everything is going. Either bills, savings, expenses, etc.

We cut down our debt and our monthly nut substantially this way.

Dave Ramsey is a Christian financial guru who's pretty famous for turning bad situations around pretty quickly. He said that managing money is like herding cats. If you're not paying attention to it, it will just leave and you won't know where, when, or how. it's a pretty true statement.