<prompt> Human: I work mostly on commission. Ive been out of school and working for a year an a half. Made 90k gross and 49k net this year and I have less than 500 to my name at the moment. Heres a little breakdown of my expenses and bills1500mo rent and electric and internet600mo office rentexpenses550mo student loans - 45k balance375mo in credit card bill - 8k balance over 4 credit cards150mo dry cleaning and laundry200mo health insurance300mo approx other insurance costsI live in Manhattan so you know everything is expensive. I cannot cook so food turns into a huge monthly expenditure, and seamless and eating out tend to be my biggest allies. I also tend to go out a lot at night, but Ive cut that down substantially to about once a week, so lets call that 500mo. Theres metrocards 112mo, taxis 75mo, and gas and tolls 100mo. Apparently I have Health insurance under my parents so Ive canceled that for 2014. Also, Im a pack a day smoker and those cost 13 each. I do expect my work expenses to go up as Ive been doing many more client lunchesdrinks, marketingadvertising, and Im moving from a cubicle to an office - so lets say this will increase my work expenses from 600 to 1300. So now back to the title. Im living above my means and I cant figure out how to get it all under control. Help!Assistant: Simple. Start living below your means. Lets itemize here.1500 rent600 office550 loans375 CC min150 dry cleaning200 health insurance500 food300 transportation400 cigarettesThis means you need a take home pay of about 4600mo just to scrape by on the minimum, and youre still 8k in credit card debt. RED FLAG! You have a debt emergencySo lets focus first on making some cuts. You need to cook for yourself from now on; this will bring your dining out to a grocery budget, for roughly a 400 savings at the least. rcooking, rslowcooking, rrecipes for starters. Food Gawker is also a good external site. Im sure rfrugal will have some great recipes for cutting the fat out of your budget. With the wonders of subtraction, you are down to 4100.Need to smoke? Too bad. Youre now on the patch. rstopsmoking is now your friend. I know quitting might be hard, but 400 a month on cigarettes is not doing you any favor. You can eliminate most of this budget if you take the patch option. Were now down to about 3900.Why on earth are you not being reimbursed for your office expenses? Your employer should cover them at the very least. Client lunches and drinks should be reimbursable too, within reason. If your employer refuses, you can itemize your taxes and deduct that from your income. Since this is a new year, you should start collecting your receipts. For more information: link Depending on your employer, you may be able to eliminate this budget entirely. Were getting there. Hang tight.How far away do you live? You may be interested in a bike. That will cut your ridiculous metro fees and your gas expenses, and assuming no other method of transportation in the summer, it will pay for itself in two months.Any other savings need to go directly to money that you borrowed. You say you have 500 to your name. That is false. You are in the red right now, and you will need to dig yourself out. for the best method of attack on bringing this down.You may be interested in watching your expenses as you build up your net worth. I would highly recommend Mint.com or YNAB to track where every penny goes. Any penny that you dont track will slip through the cracks.Just calm down, hang tight, and start being more careful. Theres light at the end of the tunnel, and all you need to do is have the discipline to follow it.Human: Well, lets back up a little. As a person working on commission, I cant reasonably know what Ill bring home any given month. But even if it averages out to 5k a month, youve got to realize that this could mean 3 this month and 7 next month, by which time Ive missed several payments on several things and Im already on trouble. Im not reimbursed for my expenses, but they are considered business expenses and I do keep receipts and have been told that I can reasonably expect to get 5-7k back in a refund. Now assuming I manage to quit smoking several failed attempts over the past few years and manage to save a ton on food a reasonable expectation, transportation cant come down because I travel all over the city and to neighboring states for work. Also, I didnt mention this but Im 25 and most of the CC debt came in the 4 months between school and work. I guess the big question, for me at least, is even with good planning and major spending cuts, if I have one bad month, I could in theory be out on the street. Is it better to dump into my debt whenever I can or put together an emergency fund, because if a second bad month happens, I could very much end up re-maxing out my credit cards or spending through all of my cash pretty quickly. And mind you, Ive had successively bad months making less than 2k , but Ive had months where I made 10-12k. Kinda feels like Im stuck in a catch 22.  <response>: Youre currently in a pretty risky position, with no emergency fund and way way way waaay tooo much of expenses. Youre in an emergency situation, because indeed: one bad month, and your whole financial house crumbles down.But you could get out of it. The best way to work with irregular income is to build up a buffer. Put all income, no matter whenever it comes in and how much it is, in one extra checking account. Transfer a fixed amount of money from that checking account every month to your normal checking account, for your monthly expenses. If the buffer in the checking account becomes big enough, and if you manage to live on less than what you bring in during a year, you will have a stable income and a stable financial life. Example: if you would live on 3k per month: First month: income 5k, expenses 3k - buffer 2kSecond month: income 2k, expenses 3k - buffer 1kThird month: income 10k, expenses 3k - buffer 8kFourth month: income 4k, expenses 3k - buffer 9kFifth month: income 2k, expenses 3k - buffer 8kEt cetera. This does indeed require you to lower your expenses. That is an absolute necessity. People on this thread have pointed out the things where you can spend less. And I agree with them. 