My 8000$ Per Year Challenge

Big suprise, I am going to work abroad for exactly one year. The country I am going to work in is the United States of America, so I thought why not challenge myself to live there without wasting a lot of money. It is a very special internship, that is of course unpaid. That means I will only spend money abroad, but not acutally earn some.

Basically I want to make it with 8,000$ a year, without actually having an effect on the quality of life. Since I am about 2 month away from the day when I start working there, I started planing this hopefully adventurous journey.

First of all I made a list of things that I will definitly need there, such as a place to stay, food and so on. In the next step I sorted them according to the costs. Since I wanted to meet new people and really experience a lot of things there, it is absolutely not necessairy to rent a large apartment with pool and a butler.

A tiny room in a shared apartment is what I aim for, especially because this is a great way to get to know people very easily. As you can see I have also set priorities, thats crucial. The housing and a car, for example, are not important at all for me.

An Adequate Accomondation Is Key

The number one tool to find apartments, you might already know that, is of course craigslist.org. You can fnd classifieds for every large city in America and around the world. It is also a good way to find out what people charge in different areas of a city. Naturally, I just pick out a few good offers and print them out, so that I can contact the owner when I arrive. I would never make a deal in advance since you never know how the people are, if you like them, or if the apartment is really the same mentioned in the online classified.

Also, there are a lot of scammers out there, be aware of them! I know some colleagues of mine that lost 1,000$+ on such scams. In addition, it is also not really essential to sign a contract. In fact, that is comfortable for both sides, since they can – if it comes to the worse – just seperate from each other.

Back to my point. I want only to have a tiny room in a shared apartment, it should not cost more than 400$ a month, including internet, which is absolutely necessairy for me. I made a research on craigslist and it seems that the price is pretty realistic.

In case a room can not be found immediatly, there is the option of staying in a cheap youth hostel for several days or even trying out CouchSurfing, which is for free. If you find a couchsurfer in your city – should not be a big problem in larger U.S. cities – you could also ask about good offers regarding rentals. Most of the time it will be possible to get a discount if you stay somewhere for a longer time, which is relevant in my situation.

Healthy And Cheap Nutrition (Yes?)

I admit that especially in the United States it is sometimes difficult to overcome the temptation. Fast food restaurants are almost everywhere, nevertheless I am convined that it is much cheaper to eat healthy. That might not sound possible on the first place, but if you take a closer look at what you get for your money at McDonalds, you will see that it is not really an attractive price. However, the plan is to buy in bulk, to buy food in quantities that will last at least one week. That way I can benefit from the discount I get on the quantity, and  I can effectively plan my meals for the whole week, this will save precious time.

Sightseeing

Everything is possible. So why not try to visit some interessting places without exceeding the limit of 8 grand. The CouchSurfing Community is basically made for that purpose, that means I will try to not waste money on hotels, or hostels. The only thing that I have to pay for is the flight. I could take a bus, however, travelling for days is not funny at all.

Additional Expenses

Of course I can not list all the costs. I do not know how often I will go to the barber, or wheather I am going to buy a drink here, or there. For that purpose I guesstimate to need 500$, which is an amount that I am not likely to exceed. Even tough those expenses seem to be very low, if I do not watch my finances, they could threaten the whole challenge. I want to enjoy life while saving money.

That said, I plan on going out several times a week and attending different events like basketball games and so on. Why not having a lot of fun… Eventually, the key for success is budgeting. When having a plan of the estimated costs, it is easier to handle money on such a stay abroad.

Hopefully everything works out very well. For sure there will be some issues that can not be solved instantly. However, I am going to tell you how everything was. Let the challenge begin!