Reply to How much money do you need monthly to maintain your life-style?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Not sure everyone is counting the same things.  Just a few of my monthly expenses:

$800 - health insurance premium (self insured)
$500- contribution to HSA plan (some double counting with the next one except we use this as a savings vehicle so don't use it to pay health expenses)
$600 - out of pocket health care due to high deductible plan, although again some of this is kid related
$800 - weekly house cleaning plus tax obligation on that
$200 - lawn care (March-November)
$800 - groceries/wine (although that does include food for kids, so maybe a little less)
$400 - eating out (one or two decent meals, a few quick take outs)
$1200 - average monthly cost for vacations and travel not counting kids portion (ski trips, weekend trips, travel to summer house)

So that's over $5000 without clothes, car insurance, gas, car repairs, utilities, cell phone, gifts, contributions to church and charity, savings, etc.  I get that much of this is at the high end but health care alone is nearly $2k.[/quote]

YOu spend $800 on weekly cleaning?  Either that's a typo or you are nuts.[/quote]

[b]I pay my housekeeper $80 week in CASH
[/b]Yes, it ends up averaging about $800/month or $200/week. We pay both sides of SS and Medicare taxes plus unemployment, vacation (so we are paying for 52 weeks) and a year end gift. Now if I didn't have kids we might be able to get by with 2x per month so theoretically that could be cut in half. [/quote]

[/quote]

That's great for you. We have a big house, our person has worked for us for 25 years, and does a lot of extras (including laundry). I work FT so am happy to outsource this aspect of home care. Because of job circumstances we can't pay under the table so we pay all the taxes, which adds about 15-18% to the weekly amount. I have looked into a cleaning service (which then would include the taxes) and it would be about the same price and they wouldn't do as much so we stick with what's working.[/quote]

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