Apartment found, sold, and moved all in one weekend

I officially start at my new position on Oct. 15, which meant I had to find someone to take up the rest of my lease, find a new apartment, and me moved prior to October 15. Somehow, I managed to do all that this weekend, even though everything came down to the wire.

For a while, I was contemplating forgoing the $2500 security deposit, figuring my sign-on bonus and better job satisfaction would more than make up for that small financial hit.

Thankfully, I'm getting that back. Add to that my relocation bonuses and my old company paying me for unused vacation time, I've got some large checks coming.

My plan is to save a large portion of it, but still have money to buy a new LCD TV and a cheap sofa set.

At the same time, I have to come to grips with living by myself, which means I pay for 100% of the utilities, rather than the 3-way split I had. For utilities like cable, that was a great deal. For now, my way to cut back is to decrease my monthly discretionary budget, until I see how much utilities actually end up being, and then I can readjust accordingly.