Reply to Family budget if your income is around $180-200K

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Family budget if your income is around $180-200K"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]175K HHI, DINKs

We average 8500/month after taxes, health insurance (~250/month), retirement contributions (~1700/month), union dues (honestly, don't know my guess is 30-40/month), and the office gym (~35/month)

mortgage: 2300 PITI
student loans: 840
home decor: 750 
groceries: 500 (vegetarian, mostly organic and local food, cook most meals at home from scratch, pack lunch)
transportation: 290 (MARC, metro, gas, parking)
utilities: 200 (does not include internet, which is provided by my husband's work, or cable, which we don't pay for beyond netflix/Amazon Prime)
home supplies: 200 (the toilet paper, paper towels, Amazon Prime etc.)
personal care: 200 (Mostly my monthly massage, but also includes makeup and skin care.)
insurance: 150 (life, car)
clothing: 140 (capped at 2500/year)
gym: 130 (yoga studio, LA Fitness)
entertainment: 100 (includes Netflix)
cell phones: 90
cat: 75
dining out: 65

So far this year, our expenditures have averaged 6K/month.  The savings go to irregular expenses (medical, gifts, charity, car and home maintenence and travel) as they come up. We make our charitable donations in November. We give large donations ($500+) to local charities that provide essential services to those in need (think Capital Area Food Bank, Legal Aid, etc); smaller donations ($100 or so) to neighborhood charities, arts organizations, and charities our friends run; and nominal donations($10-$50) to our alma maters and friends who ask us for donations.

We begin each year with a meeting on our financial priorities for the upcoming year and develop a monthly budget accordingly. This year, we're prioritizing decorating the home we bought last year. In previous years we've prioritized international travel (spent 6K), saving for a down payment (around 30-35K, as we only put 5% down because we were rushing to buy while we could still afford the neighborhood we wanted to be in), building professional wardrobes after grad school, and saving for furniture (spent 10k) after renting a furnished apartment.

We track our spending pretty closely as that's the only way I've found that we know where our money is going. And it's so easy to spend more money on certain categories (clothing, eating out, groceries, entertainment) than we're okay with. The one area I want to spend less in is groceries - I think we should spend closer to 400, but it's so easy to stock up on pantry items that just sit there. But we do consider healthy food (and gyms and massages) an investment in our health.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics