<prompt> Human: Yes, I want peoples opinions.I come from a very financially poor family, and I DO NOT want to end up living my life like how it was for me growing up.So, here are the details: Please dont assume anything until you know the facts, just askI am a 20 year old male. My gf is 21 and we come from similar backgrounds, neither of us want to live with the lack of money anxiety we grew up with in our families.Currently, we both go to community college no loans, FAFSA covered all tuition I have a 3.6gpa in the 2nd semester 1st year business administrationattend full time I work full time in a stable job good for college in sales for Tracker Boats, make 12 a hour no commission. Bring home pay is 1200month after taxes and health insurance. Been here for 2 years now.I was making 650 a week take home pay as a welder at my last job 63 hour work weeks I am aws certified but then the area I live tanked in the manufacturing field flux core welding boilers and my company had a mass layoff me included. Then I found myself here figured sales experience would be helpful down the road, blue collar makes great cash but destroys the body over time, i am in no way against hard workFinancial situation:-1200 bring home pay a month. -Health insurance through my job.-960 a month rent for our apartment divide by 3 because of me, her, and our roomate so my share is 320-Phone bill is 103 a month-Car insurance is 88 a month liability 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix, runs and looks great despite 170,000 miles, I own it so no car payment.-my share of electricity is 55-my share of Internet is 25-I make a monthly loan payment of 90 this way by the end of this loan I will have 2 years of credit history, 1000 loan over a year, the other year was a previous loan for the same goal of building credit-I have 2 credit cards. 1 I never use unless very necessary, the other is for gas and cheap under 4 dollar Taco Bell meals for lunch. - I have a Kohls Card that I owe 45 dollars on.- I have a Firestone Card 1200 limit, got it when I needed tires for my car, now only use it for oil changes but currently owe 125 on it- I spend about 40 bucks a week for gas- 45 a month gym membership never get to go to because of the time I spend on work and school work but it has a huge cancellation fee unless I wait for my membership to end 4 months left- I owe 700 to a family friends mechanic shop my AC system blew up over the summer, it was a 1200 repair, so far half is payed, this is where most, if any, of my spare money goesI never miss payments on anything. I am able to pay all my personal bills exception to rent, Internet, and electricity, budgeting skills on point?. I pay for all my needs, but have VERY little left over to spend on wants, and currently save nothing. Its really depressing when all I want is a radio for my car no aux jack, so I have to use CDs and cant even afford something like that. didnt have the car when I was a welderNow, your probably wondering what happened to all my money I made working as a welder for a about a year and a half, well... I dont know. It was the first time I ever had decent money in my life and ive been employed since the day I turned 16, no vacation still :...worked at Taco bell, Kmart, Then the Boiler Place, now Bass Pro in the Boat Sales Department. and I bought spent alot on taking the GF out to eat, bought everybody I knew something nice for their birthdays, ...and christmas, good god must have spent like 5k not on just her but on my little brothers and sister, mom, dad, and cousins. the 800 for firecrackers that 4th of july didnt help either. A big chunk of savings went to my current vehicle after a 67 year old lady driving a 2010 mustang GT lost control and totaled my 1997 chevy Z71. bought my current car for 2500 at 150k miles.so... Im just concerned right now because I realized I actually NEED to use the credit card in order to get by but always pay it off at the end of each month. This in itself is throwing me a red flag. IDK what to do besides grab a 2nd job while also full time in college again, yeah I had 2 jobs 1st semester but Im worried I wont be able to devote enough time for school because to me, thats a high priorityAfter some hard thought and some math, I need a career that will make at least 90k a year before taxes to sustain the lifestyle I want to live when I am older. I do not want to drown in college debt, infact, I want to avoid debt like the plague. I know that I want a nice 2 story house, a Z06 Corvettethose im sure of and healthy investment accounts and maybe a couple rental properties for future retirement income. But I also dont want to work my life away just delaying gratification until im too old to enjoy what I wanted to do while I was young. soo... thoughts?EDIT: I understand the phone bill and why people would be concerned over it. But unfortunately, its one of those I dont want to, but its necessary things. I was paying 60 a month with the last phone some prepaid att phone and 5 gigs of data but I HAD to upgrade due to school and my job requirements. The previous phone could not handle Excel operations, PDF formatting, and image enhancement took terrible photos ontop of that which, when your selling boats, good photos are a necessity for consumers that are out of city state, and also only gave me 15GB available storage. So I upgraded to the S4. It handles everything I need it to flawlessly, its not for playing games or other useless crud.  <response>: I make a monthly loan payment of 90 this way by the end of this loan I will have 2 years of credit history, 1000 loan over a year, the other year was a previous loan for the same goal of building creditNo! Never take a loan out and pay interest for the sole purpose of building credit! You can accomplish the same thing for free with using a credit card and paying the statement balance in full every month! budgeting skills on point?Nope.You can not claim to have your budgeting skills on point until you have an actual budget. The way you are living - paying all bills but having nothing left over and no plan to get out of the debt you are in - is not a symptom of good budgeting skills.First step is to make that budget. Write down every single category of expenditures you have. Do not put a bills category or any sort of fun money category. Every single dollar you earn gets assigned a job into a very specific category. What those categories are will depend on what you generally spend money on, as everyone should make the categories as specific as is helpful to their own situation.List all of your debts on that budget. That should include the totals owed, the minimum payments, and the interest rates. This will be essential to getting you a plan to becoming debt free and then having a healthy net worth.When making the budget I suggest you go back through all of your creditdebit card statements for at least the last 3 months and categorize every single expense. That will help to show you what you are actually spending money on and what you need to fix. You may discover, for example, that fuel for your car is a lot more expensive than you realized or that you have a serious Taco Bell problem when you thought you only spent a few bucks there each month. Tracking your spending is essential at this stage going forward as well, to show you where your money is actually going as opposed to where you want it to go. But I also dont want to work my life away just delaying gratification until im too old to enjoy what I wanted to do while I was young.Being poor when you are older hurts a lot. But that doesnt mean it has to be an eitheror proposition. Proper budgeting and wise financial choices means you can both have spending money now and the security of money when you are older as well.I recommend you read a few books to help you change your relationship with money. Most good personal finance is simply getting your financial situation into a rather boring automatic state - where you dont have to worry if you have enough money in the bank account to pay that automatic debit because your finances are on a strong path - but getting to that level requires more psychological changes than just pure math ones. So I recommend you read Your Money or Your Life and The Millionaire Next Door. That will help set you on a path that brings both current satisfaction as well as wise future planning together. 