What Do You Financially Pritoritize?
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Anonymous
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I want to see what DCUM spend most of their money on. How important are some things to you? Do you have to sacrifice others?
Out of these, or any others that you can think of, what do you personally think is the most important? The least? Children's private school saving for children's college expenses Mortgage (living closer in or having a larger house) Vacations Extracurricular activities for your or children Clothing Eating out Investments Entertainment (going to movies, amusement parks) Saving for retirement Savings for emergencies |
Anonymous
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Children's private school
saving for children's college expenses Mortgage (living closer in or having a larger house) Vacations Extracurricular activities for your or children Clothing Eating out Investments Entertainment (going to movies, amusement parks) Saving for retirement Savings for emergencies Bolded above. We walk to work and school yet live in a safe, leafy neighborhood with sidewalks and a few parks, close to everything we need. Hefty mortgage for that (and small house). We try to balance kids' current educational needs/enrichment with investing for our retirement and college. Kids go to a good public. We buy good quality second-hand clothes and furniture, and occasionally travel abroad to see our families, but sadly cannot allocate funds for "fun" destinations. We are frugal on "consumable" entertainment (practically no eating out, movies, etc). |
Anonymous
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Children's private school
saving for children's college expenses Mortgage (living closer in or having a larger house) Vacations Extracurricular activities for your or children Clothing Eating out Investments Entertainment (going to movies, amusement parks) Saving for retirement Savings for emergencies |
Anonymous
| Vacations |
Anonymous
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Present day -
1. No debts (apart from mortgage and car payments) 2. Emergency fund - 3 months worth 3. Life Insurance. More than adequate insurance. No one will ever need to work for the rest of our lives to make ends meet, pay for college, pay for retirement - kind of insurance. Term Life. 4. Disability and Long Term Disability insurance 5. All kinds of Homeowners and car insurance Future 6. Retirement (aggressive savers - we live very well but below our means. We live in the suburbs - in a house bought 18 yrs ago at the bottom of the housing market - so we have a ton of equity, very low mortgage payment and the value of the house has doubled - even when the housing bubble burst) 7. Kids college - saved enough to bankroll medical school for both kids- they will have no student loans if we can help it. Kids go to public schools currently. |
Anonymous
Given our and our children's ages, our most important priorities, after making sure we have a roof over our heads and food on the table, are saving for college and retirement. Life, health, and disability insurance are all extremely important as well; if I had to choose, I would reduce retirement and college savings to buy life and health insurance. All the other stuff is fluff, including emergencies. For true, catastrophic emergencies, we could tap retirement or college savings. Anything else we could figure out a way to pay for. |
Anonymous
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Retirement
College savings Private school Travel We live in a tiny, very blah house to meet those other needs/wants. |
Anonymous
1)Emergency Savings 2) Clothing (assuming this isn't extravagant, food, shelter and clothing are the first big three)- otherwise it goes to the bottom end 3) Mortgage- prepay or saving for house - depending on where you are 4) Saving Retirement 5) Saving for college The rest are up to the individual taste. |
Anonymous
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1.)Mortgage (living closer in-time is money, don't care about having a larger house) 2.)Saving for retirement (will help pay student loans if needed from my retirement money) 3.)Investments 3.)529 4.)Entertainment (going to movies, amusement parks) 5.)Vacations 6.)Extracurricular activities for your or children 7.0private school? maybe private high school-years away 8.)Eating out 9.)Clothing |
Anonymous
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#1: saving for retirement
34, $1.4M net worth. It's almost to the point where it throws off enough cash to pay for college already. Start early. |
Anonymous
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The three Bs
Booze Breast Implants Botox Maybe Emergency Fund (includes savings for buying home) and Retirement. My kid is going to assume college isn't free can will have to look for a scholarship. |
Anonymous
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Since actions speak louder than words, here are the items from your list that we spend more on than we would if we were in survival mode:
Saving for children's college expenses Eating out Saving for retirement Savings for emergencies (actually, for us we're now saving for a down payment more than anything else but savings in general are a high priority) |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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In order of priority:
1. Mortgage (living closer in or having a larger house) - an essential 2. Clothing - we spend little on clothing but it's an essential 3. Eating out - part of our food budget 4. Saving for retirement - another essential but it is automatically deducted from my paycheck 5. Entertainment (going to movies, amusement parks) 6. Vacations 5. saving for children's college expenses - have automatic deductions but this is essentially what is left over 6. Extracurricular activities for your or children - rarely do this, can find the money for it but it's not a priority 7. Investments - we already have significant investments so it's not a priority to add more 8. Savings for emergencies - we already have a robust emergency fund so no priority for more 9. Children's private school - wouldn't do this under any circumstances/don't believe in private schools |
Anonymous
Can you tell me more about this? |