Shocked: Our bare-bones monthly cost of living is 5K after taxes! What's yours?

[Anonymous]

Frugal poster, do you ever buy things for your child? Clothes, toys, books, you know.. stuff? Because if you do, it certainly wasn't reflected in your budget.

My daughter is in no way spoiled, I try to buy most of her clothes on craigslist, most on her toys on sale, most of her books used on Amazon, but it still adds up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Frugal poster, do you ever buy things for your child? Clothes, toys, books, you know.. stuff? Because if you do, it certainly wasn't reflected in your budget.

My daughter is in no way spoiled, I try to buy most of her clothes on craigslist, most on her toys on sale, most of her books used on Amazon, but it still adds up.

We got everything either from our shower or as hand me downs. Actually, one thing I remember buying new was nipples for the bottles and pacifiers. Anyway, I already explained this was from last month from the top of my head. DH is the one who crunches the numbers so exact values of vacations and other expenses that are not recurrent were not listed. Hm... please add to your notes about MY bills that I did buy DC one thing for first birthday... a Bilibo for $5. The best $5 ever!!!! This thing takes no space at all, entertains DC for HOURS and substitutes a lot of plastic crap people spend fortunes with.

[Anonymous]

Not the Frugal Poster, but I consider anything I buy for my one-year-old DD to be in the want category rather than the need category. Between hand me downs and grammies we have more stuff than we can deal with. If we were struggling and needed to cut back, I would actively seek out hand me downs and be more specific with our moms about what we need.

[Anonymous]

BARE bones (i.e. things that HAVE to paid even if one of us losses our job):

Rent: $1405
Utilities $160
Health/Life Insurance: $400
Car/Renter's Insurance: $150
Food: $400
Baby (Formula/Diapers): $150
Daycare: $900
Car Payment$ 400
Gas $100
Dog: $50
Credit Card: $100
Student Loans: $150
Cell Phones: $150
Toiletries: $75

So, about $4600 bare bones. BUT, when you factor in all the "extras" (401K, savings, phone/cable/internet, gas, toys, clothes, eating out, Target outings, BINGO our actual spend is closer to $6000. We are a family of 4 (2 adults, one infant, one dog).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BARE bones (i.e. things that HAVE to paid even if one of us losses our job):

Rent: $1405
Utilities $160
Health/Life Insurance: $400
Car/Renter's Insurance: $150
Food: $400
Baby (Formula/Diapers): $150
Daycare: $900Car Payment$ 400
Gas $100
Dog: $50
Credit Card: $100
Student Loans: $150
Cell Phones: $150Toiletries: $75

So, about $4600 bare bones. BUT, when you factor in all the "extras" (401K, savings, phone/cable/internet, gas, toys, clothes, eating out, Target outings, BINGO our actual spend is closer to $6000. We are a family of 4 (2 adults, one infant, one dog).

Curious as to why these couldn't be cut of one of you loses a job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to our monthly budget (family of 3, no debt other than mortgage), we aim to spend $4,250 a month or less. This includes everything but mortgage, daycare, and health insurance deducted from DH's paycheck. I think some months we hit our target, some months we do better, and some months we fall short (because of unforeseen house expenses, vet bills, car expenses, etc.). If I added in all the unplanned crap, I imagine we would be in the $5,000 range too. If we had to cut back, we could, but we are by no means "spendy" people. We eat out too much, though.

And this is the other extreme. So other than what are likely your three largest monthly expenses, you spend $5000/month? Hate to break this to you, but you are indeed spendy people.

I just realized our "$4,250" does include daycare. So we're closer to $3,100 for total monthly expenses. Add in mortgage ($2,150) and daycare ($1,150), and we're averaging about $6,400 per month in total expenses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BARE bones (i.e. things that HAVE to paid even if one of us losses our job):

Rent: $1405
Utilities $160
Health/Life Insurance: $400
Car/Renter's Insurance: $150
Food: $400
Baby (Formula/Diapers): $150
Daycare: $900Car Payment$ 400
Gas $100
Dog: $50
Credit Card: $100
Student Loans: $150
Cell Phones: $150Toiletries: $75

So, about $4600 bare bones. BUT, when you factor in all the "extras" (401K, savings, phone/cable/internet, gas, toys, clothes, eating out, Target outings, BINGO our actual spend is closer to $6000. We are a family of 4 (2 adults, one infant, one dog).

Curious as to why these couldn't be cut of one of you loses a job.

In that case, both defintely could be trimmed but not cut completely. We have contracts on the phones and I expect that DS would stay in daycare at least part-time while one of us was job searching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Greetings from Flyover Country.

$2000 per month covers ALL for a comfortable living where there are decent schools.

And how many jobs pay over $50k a year in Flyover Country?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Greetings from Flyover Country.

$2000 per month covers ALL for a comfortable living where there are decent schools.

Is that so? Curious as to how much you're saving for retirement and college on $2k a month.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Greetings from Flyover Country.

$2000 per month covers ALL for a comfortable living where there are decent schools.

And how many jobs pay over $50k a year in Flyover Country?

And I'd like to know the price of your house and your monthly mortgage (PITI).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Sounds like you have less than 20% equity in your home, because you mention that insurance and tax are paid thru escrow. Your discretionary spending is out pacing your mortgage by 5 vs. 2. I would be socked as well. Our bare-bones budget is about 40% of yours, but our mortgage is paid off!

This is not necessarily the case. We have 50% equity in our house and pay our mortage and taxes through escrow. If you have less than 20% equity you can't go without escrow, but you can always go this route if you want to. For us, its just one less thing to worry about since our mortgage/escrow is set up to pay automatically.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, well 60K a year for private school for 2 kids shoots that straight to hell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not the Frugal Poster, but I consider anything I buy for my one-year-old DD to be in the want category rather than the need category. Between hand me downs and grammies we have more stuff than we can deal with. If we were struggling and needed to cut back, I would actively seek out hand me downs and be more specific with our moms about what we need.

You're lucky to have really supportive grammies and a lot of friends willing to share their hand me downs!

Not the case with us. My parents are overseas, DH's parents are in Philly and are really cheap. And we're new to the area, so we have to completely fend for ourselves.

I consider stuff for my daughter to be in the 'need' category, because if I don't buy it, she'd have to do without. And a kid does need at least some basic toys, not to mention clothing..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not the Frugal Poster, but I consider anything I buy for my one-year-old DD to be in the want category rather than the need category. Between hand me downs and grammies we have more stuff than we can deal with. If we were struggling and needed to cut back, I would actively seek out hand me downs and be more specific with our moms about what we need.

You're lucky to have really supportive grammies and a lot of friends willing to share their hand me downs!

Not the case with us. My parents are overseas, DH's parents are in Philly and are really cheap. And we're new to the area, so we have to completely fend for ourselves.

I consider stuff for my daughter to be in the 'need' category, because if I don't buy it, she'd have to do without. And a kid does need at least some basic toys, not to mention clothing..

This pretty much captures what's most annoying to me about the frugal poster spending $40 week on groceries. Instead of acknowledging and being grateful for the many, many subsidies in her life, she thinks it makes her more virtuous than the rest of us.

[Anonymous]

The issue I think about when I read this thread is that many of us have already reduced our expenses everywhere we could... any ideas? I mean, when we go food shopping, the price on those goods is not negotiable, and neither is our mortgage and so on.