BTW I would recommend NOT re-opening your past cards. Why tempt yourself to spend more????? I also recommend Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. Its a great book that walks you through all the babysteps including budgeting and how to pay off your debt quickly!

Don’t worry so much about the debt - the bulk of yours is coming from student loans, which are a “good” debt. Just keep chipping away at it!

Definately track your net worth - it’s great positive reinforcement to remind you why we work so hard to LBYM.

Best of luck,
NP

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I shudder to think what numbers would pop out if I entered my info into the networthIQ thingy.

As far as the tax bracket goes, I wouldn’t be horribly concerned about staying in the 15% bracket - we do have that lovely progressive system after all, so even if the money above the 15% cutoff is taxed higher, it’s still extra money. =) You can always put away money in your 401k to reduce your burden, and you can find a bunch of tax deductions. If your parents are NOT taking you as a dependent this year (mine didn’t when I graduated because they reasoned that May was less than halfway) you can claim the Lifetime Learning Credit for yourself (20% of the first $10k of expenses, even if they paid them.) And your student loan interest is deductible. And if you moved for your job, you can deduct that, etc etc etc…

Anyway, my experience last year (I also started in July) is that I was HUGELY overtaxed and even though I had more than $7k of self employment income, and even though I had worked a LOT at college, I still got like a $1k refund. So you can probably have 3 or 4 exemptions on your W-4… just remember to adjust it back down at the beginning of next year. You can use the W-4 calculator to figure it out once you get your first regular paycheck.