First off, good job starting early! You might feel it's difficult to get started with a small salary, but over time, you'll be way way ahead of 30 year olds that have accumulated debts and other bad decisions if you just avoid them. Because of this, YES THERE IS HOPE FOR YOU! :)
Income: Where is this job going? Will you be expecting to get promotions soon, and if so, how soon? Do you have plans for college (or have a degree already)? If so, what are they? If not, have you considered trades? I live in the Denver area, and there are easily 15 electrician's jobs posted
per day.
Good job with the permanent full time employment - a lot of males in our age range are unemployed, arguably between 9% and 12%. However, $9.27 is chump change, now matter how low the COL might be in your area (if it is), and any responsible hardworking adult with no prior experience deserves $12+, IMHO. With room to grow,
lots of room.
Commute: IRS says it's
$0.51/mi to drive. I've crunched the numbers on my own car (23mpg, 10+ years old, 150k+ miles) and actually found that it's $0.56 for me - ouch.
Looks like your commute is (5 days * 4 weeks) 20 work days a month, with a
60mi round trip. That comes out to (60*20) 1200 miles a month. Your total car costs seem to be
$375/mo, which comes out to about
$0.31 cents a mile, right now. However, if you were including all the other car things, such as insurance, repairs and maintenance, it's possible that the actual cost to your family unit is much closer to the IRS standard.
Try playing with this worksheet?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WUA9QjNKOOiPxMD0SnTRCb6VPDoxDf4j-Wg1__Vvjyw/edit?usp=sharingThat being said, if your current job IS going somewhere - OR, if you're planning to go to college or go into the trades, moving to a more metropolitan area might be good. Living within walking/biking distance of where you work would eliminate your car costs, but replace them with rent.
Savings: $745 appears to be solidly around
50% savings rate, which is
great. Maintaining this as your life gets more complicated might be difficult, but I definitely encourage you to try to keep it at or above the 50% you've got now.
Try to open a high interest savings account with an online bank - search the forums for suggestions - and begin saving an emergency fund.
Spouse: Does the DW work? If so, what is her income? If not, why not? What is her share of the expenses? Do you guys have combined finances, or do you keep them separate from each other? Why isn't her income/expenses included above?
If you have separate finances, all you can do is educate her and try to bring her around to your more long term point of view. When it comes to "little things", I began working on my DH's discretionary spending by cleaning out his pockets and adding up all the sums of the receipts for junk food/beef jerky/sodas and asking him, "Hey, what would you do with $75?" When his answer was "I don't know.." I told him, "Well, that's what you spent on junk in the last week." Other than pointing out these types of things and what they actually add up to, I've just been leading by example - from my example, DH has taken up using Personal Capital for tracking spending and asking me how stocks/investing works.
If you don't keep finances separate, OR if she's not making an income and is spending yours on "little things", then just put your foot down. It's your money, and your future. If she wants snacks or handbags or haircuts, she needs to get that stuff on her own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxSEW3sUitA If you have android phones, try the app "Should I buy it?"
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiodev.shouldibuyit.app&hl=enHope this helps! Good job being self aware at an early age, and good luck!
PS. You didn't mention CC debt above, which is great! However... If you don't know your credit score/don't have a credit card yet, I would look into getting one, only for playing the system. Having a high credit score is key to unlocking cheap cheap loans (only when you really need them!!) and being able to game the credit card system in general.