Family of 5, appx $300K HHI - would you do anything different?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just reporting back.
I spoke to a friend who recently divorced and she said it doesn’t matter whose name the retirement funds are in - the default is that it gets split 50/50.
I’m sure there are various stages of getting your $h!t together and I’m kind of in the not happy stage where I’m like crap - at some point I was spending less than I earned so had amassed a cushion but for quite a while now I’ve been spending more than I earned and now I have to figure out how to reign it in.

I am not yet at the part of my financial journey where I know what would be a good amount to save for retirement (though I expect my husband has some ideas) & if 17:39 is correct, then my husband actually has me on an accurate spending leash - and I really need to figure out how to stay within these new confines.

The absolute minimal for retirement for you right now is if your company offers a 401k and a match, you need to be contributing the minimum amount necessary to get whatever match they offer. Not doing at least this is leaving good "free" money on the table and makes absolutely no sense for someone making the money your are making.

Here are a couple of videos on the "FOO" - Financial Order of Operations which will help inform where you should be allocating your money and in what order:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfR9WqxDhGk

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:On the spending more than you earn - in the original post you mentioned travel. How much have you spent on travel in the last 3, 6, 12 months? If your income generally more than covers your monthly expenses is travel what’s pushing you over?

I was wondering how long it would take for anyone to ask me about that

When I just started this YNAB thing (yesterday), I googled what is a good travel budget and google said 5-10% of your salary. So I thought, I like travel - so I am picking the high end, and I input $20K to save for travel into my budget. That had me saving a lot ($1,666 a month), so seeing how much we have in bills every month - I considered reducing it to $10K but then I felt I had practically already committed us to appx $15K of travel for the next year - so reduced it to that amount.

IDK if that is also a crazy amount but I basically plan travel one year out (and some of it I've already paid for). If you book early, you can get good things for decent price. If you book late, the only good things left are expensive.

Really, what I feel kept me going for so long is that other people buy clothes and do home improvements and I didn't and put that money to travel. But then this year I traveled and spent on the aforementioned home improvements that I hadn't done in 10 years and that put me over the edge and realizing I need to consider a budget.
My proposed YNAB budget also had me saving $5K for home improvement per year which I may also need to reduce (?)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the spending more than you earn - in the original post you mentioned travel. How much have you spent on travel in the last 3, 6, 12 months? If your income generally more than covers your monthly expenses is travel what’s pushing you over?

I was wondering how long it would take for anyone to ask me about that

When I just started this YNAB thing (yesterday), I googled what is a good travel budget and google said 5-10% of your salary. So I thought, I like travel - so I am picking the high end, and I input $20K to save for travel into my budget. That had me saving a lot ($1,666 a month), so seeing how much we have in bills every month - I considered reducing it to $10K but then I felt I had practically already committed us to appx $15K of travel for the next year - so reduced it to that amount.

IDK if that is also a crazy amount but I basically plan travel one year out (and some of it I've already paid for). If you book early, you can get good things for decent price. If you book late, the only good things left are expensive.

Really, what I feel kept me going for so long is that other people buy clothes and do home improvements and I didn't and put that money to travel. But then this year I traveled and spent on the aforementioned home improvements that I hadn't done in 10 years and that put me over the edge and realizing I need to consider a budget.
My proposed YNAB budget also had me saving $5K for home improvement per year which I may also need to reduce (?)

The estimate is that most people will spend 1-2% of their home cost on routine maintenance/updates over the course of its lifespan. Some years you won't spend hardly anything but in another you have to replace the roof, the heat pump and fix the plumbing. I found that estimate to be true for us in the long run.

Also, something you may need to adjust for YNAB is that if you're higher income you can't plan on receiving financial aid for college, so you need to budget for 3 college payments in your college savings.

[Anonymous]

Hello - just checking in for my money therapy session here hah.

Things are going pretty well. I think this first month is kind of going to be a $h!tshow on YNAB while I tweak my budget- right now I’m just guessing on some budget items but how this month shakes out will start keeping me honest. This is probably par for the course.

I did actually input budgets for the 3 kids to have birthday parties which sounds so dumb but is not something I had typically done before - so I think having a budget for things like that is a real step in the right direction.

And I ran out of floss picks (which I prefer) but because I am now thinking about money, instead of buying more, first I’m going to use up the at least 15 small blue floss packs that I’ve been collecting for free from the dentist. Lol. Womp womp.

I like learning new things so this is a learning experience.

[Anonymous]

Congrats on month 1 OP! I don't know if it will be this way for you, but I got to the point where I love managing the family budget. It's like a puzzle!

Anyway, I just wanted to weigh the savings for parties/gifts. For us, this was KEY. In 2022 we got very specific about the expenses that come up over the course of a year and we ended up saving for Christmas, for birthdays, for everything and it revolutionized our year.

[Anonymous]

definitely tell your husband you are going to be putting more money toward your student loans

[Anonymous]

OP don’t do things like cutting kids’ activities and travel. Those will drastically reduce QOL. Just make small tweaks like diverting the $1600 towards student loans and looking for cheaper options where available.

[Anonymous]

Hi - OP here. I wanted to check in again here. You all really helped me a lot. I am still using YNAB and liking it. It is my third full month. i also liked watching Ramit Sethi's netflix show and I'm turning a new leaf in my life and learning personal finance. I am almost finished with the YNAB book and starting Ramit's book next (both from library - I love the library!)

There are highs and lows to this new budgeting but overall things are better than before and I have faith that the longer I keep budgeting the more things will improve.

Every time I use the HSA debit I thank DCUM in my head

Thanks again <3

[Anonymous]

Similar boat except 250 hi. Summer camps are killing us too op. Not sure what can be done about that (dh wants to send kids to his relatives abroad for a month next summer but I’m pretty nervous about that.) we did drop some school year extra c’s that in hindsight were just too much family busywork for little benefit. We would never have car payments and apparently bought a cheaper house but kid activities and food/groceries are my Achilles heel. Frankly we are spending 7k/month outside of mortgage and I don’t know how. I know I’ll get creamed here for admitting that.