It's all a game of incoming vs. outgoing. Most people make significantly less than 60k per year, and most people spend over 2x as much as they have to on monthly bills. I live relatively good on not much, but I have wiped out all monthly bills except the bare minimum, and I spend less than $3 a day on lunch. It costs $70 per week for my gas, and I have car insurance on 2 cars (I'm wasting 30$ there carrying the 2nd insurance, but lets say that's an indulgence). I don't have a phone bill, I do pay a TV/Internet bill, but it's basic. I have 400$ living expenses that are fixed. Let's say you make $5,000 per month (which is roughly 60k), you're going to give $1,500 to the government off the top - which leaves $3,500. Alright, the base expenses are $500 rent, $200 water+electric, $100 for liability insurance on a car, $300 fuel, 300$ food allowance, and $100 for your phone (you gotta have a phone I know, but you shouldn't), and $100 TV and Internet. Spending the minimum there you have $2000 per month left to divide between savings, pleasure, and upgrades as you see fit - this requires you to live modestly, buy a used car outright instead of taking a loan, and not falling for the marketing gimmicks on the basics (you don't need HBO, you don't need your phone to double as a wiw-fi hot spot, and you don't need to shop at Whole Foods).
If you insist on taking a car loan, and upgrading to a $1000 per month mortgage things change, drastically. The government still takes $1500 off the top, but now you give up $1000 for rent, your utilities go up, and just for a car you're going to owe $350 per month payment, and $300 per month for full coverage insuarance (you can't just carry liability on a car that you owe on). So now, you only have $1500 to pay for fuel, phone, TV+Internet, pleasure, savings, and anything else you want. If you go the bare minimum on everything, you will be lucky to have $500 left to buy stuff (assuming you're single and don't knock some girl up, if so then you're already in debt), and that's $6,000 per year. You can buy a nice AR-15, a Microtech Marfione Halo V, 1500 sounds of .223, a Sig 226 and $1000 worth of Spydero and Hinderer, not have a dime left and you're going to wish you had that girlfriend that you're writing out of your plans. Someone will break in and steal it all the 2nd year because you work 8 hours a day (you didn't budget for a safe), and you have given up your opportunity to expand your income because you've taken on $3500 per month in responsibilities, and going back to college is out of the question. I hope the 60k job didn't require any loans, because I left those out.
You have a lot to think about kid, but the first step is getting the cost of your living down to a bare minimum - no matter what you do, that will make your earnings go farther than anything.
