Financial Challenge of a Teacher – April 14th Update

Over the last two weeks I made progress in overcoming the financial challenges associated with teaching. Here’s a brief update on recent events.

As a reminder, I am an author of fiction and this is a creative work. However, this blog series is inspired by my personal perspective; I hope it provides insight for those who wonder why the teacher job fair in Alaska appeared to have more recruiters than job seekers this past year.

Recap

In the last update, I was staring at a deficit of $18,670. That is a formidable affair for a full-time teacher with children.

That deficit already took into account an inability to acquire personal savings or to handle miscellaneous expenses.

Lowering Rent Costs

The only reasonably affordable path I have available to me right now is to rent; owning a home in Tok is beyond my current means.

Given that fact, I sought for the last week for alternative options for rent space. This search consisted of calling around in the local small town and inquiring about any other rentals about which residents may be aware, and which are not listed on Craigslist or Zillow. I spoke with the grocery store, the local souvenir shop, a few motels, real-estate agents, and more.

Fortunately, this search seems to have produced a positive result. I met a landlord who has a unit available for several hundred dollars less than what I was worried I would have to pay.

Whereas before I believed I would have to pay a minimum of $1250/month for base rent, this deal seems to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $900/month. That’s a $350/month savings, excellent.

The base savings for this option are therefore $4200/year in net pay. When accounting for the gross pay that would have to be earned before taxes and tithing, the savings could be around $4670/year.

That brings the $18,670 deficit down to $14,000 year.

Lowering Child Care Expenses

There are child-care expenses that I must pay, and through searching for grants, financial aid, and other options, I’m grateful to have received some additional support. Child-care costs have lowered from $1140/month to $834/month.

The net savings for this reduction are $304/month, or $3672/year. The gross savings before taxes and tithing are approximately $4075.

That brings the deficit down to $9,925/year. Slowly, but surely, it seems to be becoming at least attainable.

What It Takes to Balance

I went through the rest of the budget, made some reductions that are realistic, and then did some wishful thinking to lower it until it was balanced.

I lowered the car insurance and health insurance as much as I could without taking on other risks, and then I pretended that I could do away with medical and miscellaneous expenses.

Health Ins$179.58
Car Ins$120.00
Child Exp.$834.38
Rent$900.00
Utilities$85.00
Grocery$850.00
Auto Fuel$250.00
Mobile Phone$120.00
Miscellaneous$0.00
Medical$0.00
Savings$0.00

The end result did indeed eliminate the rest of the deficit.

The final result was a surplus pre-tax and tithing of approximately $26/month.

So, at the very least, in this imaginary budget, I can get by. Wonderful. It’s good to know that I can at least have some baseline from which to start.

Of course, not all is well here. There is no accounting for anything from a flat tire to a holiday feast. There’s nothing here either about one day owning a fully paid off home, nor even setting aside savings.

However, a win is a win. I’ll take it.

Click here to go to the next post in this series.

What You Can Do to Help

Here is a link to a blog post that describes how a supportive reader can help me in my quest.

In short, you can…