>There is a way to know, we exist.

That is not proof that it has happened again, or happened before. I'm a firm believer that life does exist on other planets somewhere in the universe, but without knowing exactly what is required for life to form, the likelihood of abiogenesis, the likelihood that life would form.

Using Drake's equation you could get results as low as 1 advanced civilization per 1 quadrillion galaxies, implying we are likely alone, to as high as millions of civilizations in the Milky Way alone.

Just because something has happened does not mean it's likely to ever happen again. If I won the lottery, it would not prove that I was likely to do so again let alone that I definitively would.

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>there are millions of species on a single planet

As life on Earth evolved from common beginnings, this does not prove likelihood of intelligence arising (or even life arising.) If anything, it demonstrates how rare the evolution of highly intelligent life is. It took millions of tries for evolution to produce a single highly intelligent lifeform capable of communicating over vast distances and transiting off it's host planet.

Drake's equation says* yes.

Fermi's paradox is only a question; If advanced life is so common in the universe, then why is there no evidence of it outside Earth?

*Drake's equation doesn't actually say yes. Different people have used it to different results with some indicating the number of civilizations per galaxy are well below 1 and others saying it's as high as 10,000 per galaxy. It assumes too much likelihood of complex events we don't know enough about to definitively say anything.

Yeah. There's an excitement to creating a budget, the prospect of financial independence from high-interest debt. A honeymoon period if you will. It fades fast and the reality of adhering to it will hit hard. For some people it's a couple of weeks later, for some it's a few months. It almost always hits though.

Knowing it's in the budget makes it a choice not of whether to follow the budget, but how best to allocate that part of the budget.

>focused on paying off debt right now so the wife and I have cut out "fun" money until then

That's fair, but those additional debt payments should added as a line item as well. I would recommend caution in completely removing 'fun' money from your budget as it makes it difficult to follow your budget. One compromise can easily snowball to the point a budget gets ignored outright. Instead of eliminating consider leaving yourself $50 for a date night to allow the flexibility.

The amounts mostly seem okay, except water. I know this is highly variable by region, but I pay about $50 a quarter in a 2k sq ft home with 3 occupants, nowhere near 75 a month.

Beyond that, I ascribe to the 0 budget mentality. I would recommend adding lines for savings (tax advantaged retirement accounts being the first priority after funding your emergency savings and paying down your high-interest debt) as well as entertainment/travel/leisure/etc.

The entertainment/etc. lines would be rollover. Unused money from one month would go in to an account specific for this/these purposes and any spending on said category should never exceed the rolled over budget. It requires that you pre-fund any trips or leisure activities, avoiding the possibility of funding them at 24.99% annual interest rates.

With this philosophy, your expenditures should equal $3,605. You do lose flexibility, and some will advocate against. You can also create a 'slip' category in there of 5% of your income. This covers overruns in any critical category and any remaining funds here should go in to paying down debt or savings at the close of the month.

That's entirely possible too, I was taking into account the fact the lease includes provisions the landlord pays for water heating.

I'm sure there are also regional differences with these and also depends on the type of building. Example, a complex with multiple buildings and a few units per building would be different than a large building with scores of units.

You'll need to be able to read the meter as well to ensure it stops running. Is the water heating unit in your apartment as well? If the breakers are in the unit and the heating element is not, it's a safe bet that you aren't paying for the heating of the water.

The landlord probably is paying for it, covering the cost in the rent. It would be difficult to determine for certainty without an electrician to verify how everything is wired.

If you have access to the utility room you can check if there are separate water heating units for each apartment in the building. If a single unit, or fewer units than there are apartments it's probably through a separate meter, however it is possible it goes to one apartment's meter.

Out of curiosity, have you checked with your neighbors to get a sense for how much electricity they use? Is yours abnormal for your building?

Edit: If you have access to the circuit breaker and meter you could also turn off the power to your entire panel and check if your meter stops running up and if hot water runs out. I doubt the landlord would appreciate this test, however it could technically be done.

I think it's safe to assume OP lives in a building with multiple units. It would be more economical for the landlord to have multiple units sharing a single water heating unit (on a shared meter where hall/common area lights and similar would be) and including the average cost of this electricity usage in the rents.

Point of contention. Mother Nature didn't remove them through evolution because they weren't using them, but as the eyes didn't provide an evolutionary advantage the trait was less likely to be passed down to future generations. There was no active process to remove the eyes.

This may seem a small distinction, but it is an important one. Human intelligence still provides an evolutionary advantage. Intelligent people will be more likely to live long enough to reproduce and their offspring will be more likely to survive to adulthood to themselves reproduce.

If anything, you should be more worried about medical advances that lessen that advantage. I'm not saying we should stop trying to save every life, but when you lessen the advantage intelligence provides for survival you increase the likelihood the trait could be lost.