Can I afford this?

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I just got a raise at work from $15.25/hr to $15.50. My lease is also close to running out, and I desperately want to move out of this crappy apartment to somewhere with fewer people. There's a duplex nearby with $800/month rent. Before my raise I've been making between $850-$890 twice a month, depending on how early I get in and/or how long my lunch break is. Now with my raise it'll probably come out above $900 pretty consistently. That means at least $1800 a month. Can I afford $800 rent with that? My parents think not, but I've made do in a $400 apartment earning $11/hr before. What do you guys think?

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/Bentonville-AR/house,mobile,townhouse_type/2099958020_zpid/16989_rid/0-204151_price/0-800_mp/36.445175,-94.12159,36.289808,-94.35608_rect/11_zm/

There are some standard formulas to see what you can afford in rent. You can google it to see some. The traditional one is that you can only afford to pay 25% of your gross salary for rent. Another formula is to take your annual gross salary, divide by 40 and that gives you the amount to pay in rent. I don't know if the figures you are quoting are take-home or gross and it makes a difference.

I work with low income people with disabilities to figure out how much money they will need. I do know people who manage to live in similar situations like you describe with even less income than you have. It depends on how good you are at controlling your spending. Even people with large incomes run into problems if they can't control income. If you want to PM me, I can send you a copy of a planner used to figure out how much a person will need.

My personal opinion is that, if you can control your spending and are good at sticking to a budget, you can swing it. But make sure you are ready to tell yourself when you want to buy something extra -- that you chose a nice apartment rather than that extra....whatever it is.

I did the math as best I could. 1800 (pay) -800 (rent) -200 (church) -100 (phone) -40 (gas) -250 (groceries) -75 (internet) = $335 left over every month. Not sure what utilities would be in a place like that, but currently I pay roughly $35 a month for water and somewhere between $80-100 for electricity, so at worst that would leave me $200 spending money.

I wouldn't see why you couldn't afford to live there. I spent my young adulthood barely scraping by and eating food I took home from work. So to me having a $300 buffer seems like it would be sufficient, especially if you're a careful spender.