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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How do you budget for other very costly things in life?  We are middle-class and save $100/ month per child.  I don't want to save more for this because I want to also save for house renovations and vacations.  I also don't want my kids to graduate from college with six-figure debt.  Do you all have house funds/vacation funds, etc in your budgets?[/quote]

We don't save for house renovations and vacations (?). We do those things only if we can pay for them out of current income. College savings are much more important to us than renovating the house.[/quote]

what if your hvac dies on you?  Or your roof falls apart?  Do you live in squalor until you have the money to repair it?  Because I call bullshit.

We have an HHI somewhere around $135K with one child in public school.  We are doing our 15% to retirement (until just a few months ago, a great part of that money was into Roth IRAs monthly because my husband's employer did not have a retirement plan, and I put a small amount into a Simple IRA through my part-time employer) and are at about 30% on mortgage.  Even with very low daycare costs, we are only able to put $200/month into our daughter's 529.  We're trying to figure out currently our best plan of attack for paying for a new roof, because we don't want to drain savings (which we honestly don't have a TON of), but we also can't get a Home Equity Loan (put 10% down on our house a year ago so that we could pay for some desperately needed renovations out of pocket), so we're likely going to have to put it on credit.

There is no way in hell anyone who is NOT fairly wealthy is able to put aside the kind of money that is being touted as "what you need" these days.  The average HHI in the US is, what, $50K?  How the HELL does one put any money aside after mortgage, daycare, rising gas/food/etc and oh, any healthcare?

I 100% believe this is another bubble.  There is no way the rising costs are sustainable when kids are looking at crushing debt when their parents can't pay.  Kids coming out of college with student loans comparable to a normal monthly mortgage?  How the hell are they supposed to eat?  Not everyone starts at 6 figures.

Sorry, tangent, but my point was that we make a very decent salary and are only able to put aside $200/month.  We don't have a fancy house, we have one car payment, we take no fancy vacations.  If that is the best WE can do, imagine what is happening elsewhere.[/quote]

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