Reply to Can you survive with 7,000 monthly income after taxes ?

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[quote=Anonymous]Family of 3, we live on about this (income fluctuates a little year to year) and it's doable. But this assumes 401k and pension contributions, and health insurance, are coming out first. I don't know how else to calculate it since those come out before taxes. But after those, here's our monthly budget roughly:

2600 mortgage/property taxes
300 water/gas/electric/trash/landscaping
600 ordinary food expenses (groceries, school lunch, does not include dining out)
400 childcare (aftercare is cheap, but this includes occasional sitters and spreading camp funds out over the course of the year)
300 cell phones/streaming services/books/internet
200 gas/car insurance/other transportation (we only pay cash for cars so no car payment, and no car commute but we do spend about 80/mo on other transportation)
500 entertainment outside the house (restaurants, bars, movies, etc.)
200 clothes/shoes/miscellaneous consumer items (we buy very little and when we do, we look for consignment/buy nothing options, then sales, and only pay full price if those options are not sufficient)
500 Roth IRA
1000 split between child's savings account and 529

Remainder goes to ordinary savings. We also throw any cash gifts and tax returns there. We maintain about 40k in an emergency fund (built up well before we had a kid). It's used to pay out occasional expenses like a new washer dryer, but then we replenish with whatever our monthly surplus is, plus any additional cash we receive. We determine vacations based on the surplus over 40k, and any excess over that goes into I-bonds or a brokerage account. Some years that's nothing, other years it's 20k. Depends whether we want to splurge a bit on vacation, as well as the size of our tax return, and the cost of one-off expenses. Like if we buy a car, vacations are cheap and local and no extra money for investments. But that's once every 8-12 years. Also sometimes our parents will write us a bigger check as a Christmas gift (no idea why they sometimes do this, it's random and we don't count on this money but we will randomly get a check for 4k some years).

It's pretty doable. I don't feel rich but also far from poor. I think we enjoy our lives but are also good savers and I feel okay about both college for DC and our retirement. We'll never be rich but we'll be fine.[/quote]

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