I’m 28 and just got my first “real” job making 65k a year in Moncton NB.

Rent is $1100, car payment is $300, Insurance for the rental and my car is about $80 a month, my student loans or “magical mystery debt” is 45k owning and $350 a month for payments, I know that will change with my new job. Student loans have a special place in hell because every time I call no one can tell me why my payment is what it is and why it changes every now and then. I knows it’s adjusted to income and dependents but I don’t understand the calculations and no one at their call centre has given me any answers.

Add that in with a $100/month gym membership and about $450 a month in groceries bills and things get pretty tight pretty quick. One unexpected expense and I go from putting a small amount away each month to putting nothing away or, even worse, dipping into my savings.

My car needed new winter tires this year, that’s an extra $600 I wasn’t expecting to spend.

With this new jobs I should be putting away $500 a month after I fill up my emergency fund. I didn’t detail every expense I have in this post because that’s not really the point of the post.

The point is, as someone who’s already 10+ years into their working life with no pension or any real amount of savings, it is best to:

1) Save and buy a house, at $500 a month I should be able to put enough money away to buy a house in 2-3 years. Maybe slightly longer than that if things keep going up.

2) Put $500 a month into my TFSA until it’s maxed out, alternatively I could put it in a RRSP and get money back in taxes for my TSFA but everything I read says TFSA > RRSP.

Are there other options I’m not thinking about? The company I work for doesn’t have a pension plan and unless I go back and get my masters I’m not likely to make more than 70k in the next 3-5 years but that said 65k isn’t an awful income for NB.

Before I got this job $500 a month in savings seemed like so much but now I look at it and think $500 a month for 30 years is only $180,000 (before any gains made by investing it) and that’s assuming I can put that much away every single month. Which seems pretty tight. How much is enough to retire on?

As far as cutting from my budget goes the only things I really spend extra money on is food, gym membership and a few supplements but I don’t think I should be cutting out a healthy lifestyle in an attempt to retire earlier or richer.