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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not FP, but:

I cut my kids and husband's hair. My friend cuts mine, just a trim.

I use mama cloth. We buy TP, but clean up with rags, not paper towels. Cloth napkins.

I think she said that work buys their internet.

We grow our produce and can it. Read hillbilly housewife, it is quite possible to eat well and cheaply.

I lived 25 years without a TV. Still don't have one. Don't miss it.....

Lots of people don't take meds.

You must live on a farm. I have a large suburban garden and do a LOT of canning, but could never can enough on my 1/2 acre that my entire family could eat off of for a year. Not to mention canned food is not exactly the healthiest way to eat-probably the worst thing one could do to veggies. Also, sometimes certain crops in my garden fail because I use organic methods. What exactly are you canning that your family is eating? The obvious tomato products...but do you have a orchards? Most canned veggies are pretty nasty and you have to have an ENORMOUS crop to be able to put anything up of significance.

Additionally gardening is not free of expenses, it can be quite costly, especially when having to get creative to keep the animals from destroying my large garden. As another poster mentioned, maybe you are lost, but most people on this board live in high density areas with either no lawn or very little and if they do have a lawn, it might not be best suited for a garden. Its great that you are living on the range, but this is an urban crowd.

Don't take meds? Mosts people who have young childre encounter alot of illness. You and FP are full fo shit.

[Anonymous]

Community garden spaces exist in this area. Frozen/canned veggies are fine, but then again, you have to work at it. No use in buying imported produce, it's nasty. And square foot gardening can produce one hell of a lot of veggies if you are serious about it. So can permaculture.

But you'd rather grow expensive grass on your million dollar lawn.

[Anonymous]

Lived for ten years without health insurance. Kids didn't go to the doc unless they were seriously ill...went three times. Most stuff gets better on its own, and my kids were rarely even slightly sick.

[Anonymous]

This thread is getting so ridiculous. Wow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lived for ten years without health insurance. Kids didn't go to the doc unless they were seriously ill...went three times. Most stuff gets better on its own, and my kids were rarely even slightly sick.

Geez, PP. Just reading your post sends shivers down my spine. Having kids and not having health insurance????

"Most" stuff gets better on its own?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lived for ten years without health insurance. Kids didn't go to the doc unless they were seriously ill...went three times. Most stuff gets better on its own, and my kids were rarely even slightly sick.

Holy crap, you're an idiot. How irresponsible can you get? First off, did you take your kids for checkups? Vaccinations? What if you kid had broken an ankle - who'd have paid for that? 9Never mind, I know the answer - you'd have let the hospital, and the rest of us, eat the cost. Unless you're independently wealthy and able to self-insure?)

If I appear angry, it's because I am - people like you are the reason that my health insurance premiums are out of control.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lived for ten years without health insurance. Kids didn't go to the doc unless they were seriously ill...went three times. Most stuff gets better on its own, and my kids were rarely even slightly sick.

Holy crap, you're an idiot. How irresponsible can you get? First off, did you take your kids for checkups? Vaccinations? What if you kid had broken an ankle - who'd have paid for that? 9Never mind, I know the answer - you'd have let the hospital, and the rest of us, eat the cost. Unless you're independently wealthy and able to self-insure?)

If I appear angry, it's because I am - people like you are the reason that my health insurance premiums are out of control.

Minimum wage, no insurance available. Half the time I fed the kids and didn't eat myself. We wore hand me downs and freebies....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lived for ten years without health insurance. Kids didn't go to the doc unless they were seriously ill...went three times. Most stuff gets better on its own, and my kids were rarely even slightly sick.

Holy crap, you're an idiot. How irresponsible can you get? First off, did you take your kids for checkups? Vaccinations? What if you kid had broken an ankle - who'd have paid for that? 9Never mind, I know the answer - you'd have let the hospital, and the rest of us, eat the cost. Unless you're independently wealthy and able to self-insure?)

If I appear angry, it's because I am - people like you are the reason that my health insurance premiums are out of control.

Minimum wage, no insurance available. Half the time I fed the kids and didn't eat myself. We wore hand me downs and freebies....

If you had to live without insurance, that's one thing. That's a far, far cry from advocating not having health insurance, which is what your initial post did.

[Anonymous]

Can we get back to the intent of this thread? We all buy our food from the same sources, and unless we want to buy rotten eggs, the edible ones cost about the same everywhere in this region. What can any of us do to decrease our expenses without doing anything drastic like not buying our children toys?

[Anonymous]

Limit your children's activities, cook your own food, no tv/cable/hbo, library rather than purchase books, limit the amount of toys you buy, thrift store/decrease amount of clothes you buy, turn down the heat/ac, turn off the lights, drive older cars----don't have the newest spiffiest everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we get back to the intent of this thread? We all buy our food from the same sources, and unless we want to buy rotten eggs, the edible ones cost about the same everywhere in this region. What can any of us do to decrease our expenses without doing anything drastic like not buying our children toys?

Extreme couponing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Limit your children's activities, cook your own food, no tv/cable/hbo, library rather than purchase books, limit the amount of toys you buy, thrift store/decrease amount of clothes you buy, turn down the heat/ac, turn off the lights, drive older cars----don't have the newest spiffiest everything.

PP here. Thanks. These are all reasonable things to do, and in our household we already do most of them....we even cut out eating out once a week to not at all...but we need some low brow TV (Project Runway, Housewives of Wherever).

[Anonymous]

My parenst were self employed my childhood and my sister and I were healthy. If we needed shots or a check up we go to clinic. I needed stitches urgent care. You all are such pussies with colds. Weh weh weh my baby has a 104 fever for a couple days. Well then monitor your kid and get that amct/ ibuf combo and warm baths. Yes we were tired but I didnt run to the doc like all the other parents at daycare. Your ins comp has a hotline you call for things like this. If everyone (excluding medically fragile ppl) would just toughen up our rates would go lower.
My budget
905 mort/ins/tax
30 HOA
30 internet
242 daycare
48 water
86 (2cells) sprint
89 domion power
80 food (generic, lil meat and WIC )
260 car (gas, ins,maint)
65 ballet
80 misc (tp, shampoo, light bulbs air filter batteries

I have no debt except for home. We do get hand me down and go to clothing swaps. WE make extra fun money by selling are unsed crap on craigslist or something. If my dd wants the new harry potter well she sells some other toys. I make 2400 a mont after taxes. It seems tight but Im going to school and the children are happy. We are a completely diff family than wha I grew up in. No crap tv and money problems makes life a lot less stressful. We also have a $12000 emergency fund.
1 adult and 2 kids

[Anonymous]

FP here and I've addressed all the issues you pointed. I think you're not following the thread.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FP is full of shit.

I'll tell you why:
-no clothing costs & no shoes
-no transportation costs, so I suppose they can walk EVERYWHERE they need to be, so I'm not sure how they do that living in a "low rent" area. And wouldn't one go through a lot of shoes walking to work and every where else one needed to be?
-no internet (maybe she steals wifi from her neighbors, which is quite likely)
-no medical expenses, including asprin
-no feminine products
-no diapers
-no TV or entertainment
-fresh produce? YEA right on $35/wk because I AM a frugal from scratch shopper and spend $75/week on groceries for a family of 4. I serve up 74 meals for the 4 of us at just over a dollar each. On this alone, the poster is full of a load of shit, unless she is eating all empty carbs.
-no haircuts
-no toilet paper or other household supplies
-no emergencies

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we get back to the intent of this thread? We all buy our food from the same sources, and unless we want to buy rotten eggs, the edible ones cost about the same everywhere in this region. What can any of us do to decrease our expenses without doing anything drastic like not buying our children toys?

Extreme couponing?

We are trying couponing but it requires a lot of time we don't have. Of course, we love the show. Once a month or so we get a $10 coupon from Safeway for next week's groceries. We also got a 10% discount for the flu shot