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

Forum Index » Money and Finances

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I also have a family of 5 but spend more like $12,000 per month.  Here's where we differ:

1) Auto - we're actually higher than you here because of my wife's luxury SUV.

2) Kids activities - We're way lower here.  I think our kids just aren't in as many things (tend to do school teams rather than private, no music lessons any more, etc).  We're also spending a lot less on clothes for kids.

3) Entertainment - we're lower here.  We have digital subscriptions and whatnot, but not much else during covid times.

4) Food - we're at about $1500 total for eating out and groceries.  We have takeout multiple times a week, so it's not like we're doing it all from scratch.  I'm always under $1000 on groceries, so that seems really high.

5) Gifts - We're much lower than $500.  $500 is more like the high month when DD and DW have birthdays a few weeks apart.

6) Home/property - Our mortgage is lower; our housekeeper is $400/month, and our yard care is cheaper.  But don't listen too much to all the DCUM people, who seem to have cashed out equity from prior homes and magically have $400k mortgages on $2 million houses.

7) Insurance - This is crazy low.  I'd suggest looking at your life insurance levels and making sure they are high enough.

8) Personal care - we're in the $200 range, probably.

9) Shopping - We spend 2500-3000/month, but that includes home items, kids clothes, adult clothes, gifts, streaming, and some other items you have broken out elsewhere.

So there's lots of fat.  But if you are saving 10k+ a month, maybe it doesn't matter that much.  Still, double check that life insurance so it doesn't all come crashing down if someone dies unexpectedly.[/quote]

I mean 12K/mo in spending isn't crazy for a family of two government lawyers making 150K/year each. Plus term life insurance is cheap, so it isn't hard to insurance this lifestyle. (20-year term for me was 30/mo for about 1.75M- bought at 30)[/quote]

PP here.  12k/mo is just our non-private school, non-vacation spending.  DW is a SAHM, so there has to be enough to cover private school tuitions, college, and lots of other stuff, so our life insurance is more like $8 million, which costs more.[/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