Reply to We spend around 18K a month, where does it go?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Your budget seems eerily similar to ours.  It doesn’t seem like we live extravagantly, but I guess that is relative. [/quote]

OP here.  Tell me more!  Was it budget creep as your income went up?

Anyway, it's not that we *need* to cut back, as we are continuing to save a lot of money.  But I do sometimes have a moment of thinking, holy hell, 18K a month, how did I get here?!?

The person who said we don't really say "no" is spot on.  We don't really say "no" because of money.  We DO say "no" to our kids all the time for other reasons, and I certainly don't buy things when I think I wouldn't use it, but if I want something, I buy it.

I guess I can't decide if this is how I want to live, or if it's worth cutting back, mostly so I remember how to do it.[/quote]

DP.  We could comfortably afford a budget like yours form a financial standpoint, but I feel like there would end up being a lot of waste if we did (even accounting for our family of four vs. yours of five).  I think a useful starting point would be to think about areas where your spending may be wasteful.  For instance, how much food do you throw out each week because it doesn’t get eaten?  There are plenty of times when. I could go for eating out rather than making something at home, but I don’t because I know we would end up throwing out other food we already have.  If you’re throwing out a lot of uneaten food, maybe trim back the grocery budget and only buy what you’re reasonably going to eat rather than everything you might eat.

Same goes for clothes.  Do you often find yourself donating stuff that’s in practically new condition?  If so, perhaps you’re not being very thoughtful about what you’re buying, especially for kids.  You mention babysitting costs, so I assume at least some of yo ur kids are fairly young.  Given how quickly kids that age grow out of clothes, I bought quantities of clothing that were tailored to what they would actually need for a season rather than everything I liked.[/quote]

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