Struggling immensely with making ends meet at my salaried position; what do I cut out? - Hi all, I (22F) am a “recent” college graduate (graduated August of 2022) and I’ve been working at my current job for almost a year. I work a salaried position and make around $53,000 before taxes, and my take home pay is a little over $3,000 every month.

I currently live by myself as finding a roommate was not feasible and I live at the cheapest place I could find. My rent is $978, not including utilities. My water, electric, and internet bill total around $200 a month on top of my rent. My car insurance and renters insurance is about $150. I spend roughly $350 on groceries per month and another $100 or so on gas (but that’s been increasing incrementally).

Recently, I decided to start saving more and I attempted to utilize the 50/30/20 rule. However, I’m trying to overpay on my student loans since paying just the interest every month does absolutely nothing. With this being said, it ends up being more like 70/10/20, and I am living extremely frugal. Nothing I’m not used to, but it’s admittedly frustrating. I don’t want to reduce my savings as I feel $600 a month makes me feel more secure. I grew up poor and with parents in debt, so I’m really just learning all of this as I go- while trying to feel stable. I don’t have any investment accounts at this time, even though I know I should probably look into opening a Roth IRA or something. I just don’t feel like I’m in a place to be investing when I’m still paycheck to paycheck- but I know that’s not an excuse.

With this being said, I have about $10,000 in private loans at 14% (I plan on throwing $1,000 at that loan in 2 weeks to bring it down to $9,000) and about $30,000 on federal student loans at around 4%. Payments for those start in a month, and I’ve been having hot flashes every time I go to sleep just thinking about it. I’ve been considering picking up another job like bartending or waitressing for just a few days a week to make extra cash on the side for my loan payments, but I’m really not sure what the best method of attack is here. Any advice is greatly appreciated and if there are any details I left out that are necessary for context please let me know. Thank you in advance!


ETA: Thank you all so much for the advice I’ve received so far. I had no clue the SAVE program even existed, so thank you to everyone that has mentioned this to me. I will be filling it out tonight once I am home from work. I’ll also look into refinancing the 14% loan since I’ve gotten my credit score from the low 500’s to 710 in the last 6 months. Hopefully that helps.

Thank you all for the kind words as well. I think just growing up in the situation I did I have a lot of insecurities and anxieties around money, which has been the source of most of my distress. Hearing from y’all that I’m not in a bad position is extremely reassuring, some of your comments actually brought me close to tears- so thank you. I’m going to continue to work through all of the comments as they come in, as most (if not all of them) have some awesome advice. Y’all are amazing.

2nd ETA: Thank you to those who told me the 20 in 50/30/20 also means DEBT payments. That makes a lot more sense. I’ve been pulling the $400 a month from my 50 and my 30 for some time now… oops