He carries it EVERYWHERE, it’s his pillow and his little buddy where he goes. Other dogs aren’t allowed to even sniff it.

I don’t know what she is, I spotted her while walking to pick up my takeout and stopped to snap a pic

We have a couple old pear trees in our backyard, along with some gorgeous mulberry trees. The pears rain down on our backyard all summer.

I have never lived alone before and I have no family to ask for advice. I am nearly 35 and facing the end of a long-term relationship with someone who is mildly financially abusive.

Because I have a very large dog of a breed apartments don't generally like to house, my options on apartments are pretty limited. I absolutely fell in love with an apartment that will accept my dog (and the location will allow me to walk/bike everywhere), but the rent would be ~38% of my take-home pay and that seems like too much.

I really want this apartment. But having no support system to fall back on if something bad happens, I worry that I'm setting myself up for a bad time. I also worry I'm forgetting things that will bite me on the butt later.

Budget: link

About my finances:

• Our only shared debt is a city tax debt he hid from me our entire relationship until the city started to come after the house because of it. He has credit card debt and medical debt, I have no debt besides a small amount he ran up on one of my credit cards. I have that set up to be automatically paid off.
• While I stay in our shared home, I am able to save $1500 - $2000 a month, but huge house expenses seem to keep coming regularly. On my own, it will be far less than that.
• I own my car outright, no payments. It's in my name only.
• my credit score is 730 and rising.
• we have no children
• the house is fully-paid off and in both of our names, but because his mom bought the house for us, I plan to sign a quit-claim on it *IF* he fully pays off the tax debt first.
• he is unemployed after getting laid off and makes very little effort to find a job, it's been over a year
• I have 11 years tenure at my job, but AI is getting better at writing code and that does make me nervous. I don't have a great fallback plan in that regard and I'm terrible at networking.

My questions:

• How much of a saving's buffer do I need to have before I leap? I keep hearing huge numbers, but they are wildly impractical. If I stayed long enough to save that amount, our old-ass house or his stupid choices would find a way to eat it and make me start over again. What is the MINIMUM intelligent cash cushion to have before I leap?
• If the apartment I want is too expensive, what SHOULD I be spending monthly on rent? Please tell me why so my brain will actually listen to the information.

Some of the patches are handmade (like the jeweled heart patch made of beads), all are stitched on by hand except the denim jacket, I just used glue on that one.

Jackets are all acquired secondhand, usually online or while I’m in Amsterdam.

Some of the patches double as secret pockets. I like to sew some cash under one patch on every jacket as an emergency fund, it’s been useful once or twice. (Once. It was useful once. But still!)

I’ve been playing with kinetic jewelry and koi ponds. This is one of two ideas I tested, I made the molds in my home shop.