Reply to Family of Four on 90k - An Upper Middle Class Existence

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We are another family of 4 doing very well on less than $100k.

I make about $90k.  My husband has an income of under $10k.  He also takes care of the kids.

We are frugal but we still eat out regularly, have a new car, go on overseas vacations and regular weekend trips.  We have a good life.

We own an 1800 sq foot 3 bed row house in DC, with a 15 minutes commute (by foot) to my downtown office.[/quote]

Could you explain your spending please? Not being snarky, seriously want to learn from you.

We have a HHI of $130,000 and have 10- 13 year old cars, rarely go on any vacation, rare weekend trips and only if we're staying with friends or somewhere for $100 a night, have zero college fund and too often have to dig into savings in between paychecks.  Eating out, having a new car and overseas vacations aren't what I think of as frugal.  I like your way of being frugal better. :) Please teach me your ways.[/quote]

Some of it is that we have a low mortgage payment ($1600).  We also paid cash for our car (and don't use it a lot because we live downtown) so no car payment (it's 4 years old now, but was new when we bought it from savings).  We use frequent flyer miles for flights (or some of them), which are accrued primarily though putting all expenditure on credit cards (which are then paid off each month).  We stay with family when we travel overseas (I realize this isn't an option for everyone) and get great deals on Priceline for local trips (e.g. 4 star hotels for $50-70 a night and we only stay one night) or use Airbnb if longer so that we can have a separate bedroom for the kids and a kitchen so that we don't have to eat out every night.

When we eat out we eat at lower cost places and pay $40-50 for the family.  We use Groupons or other coupons where possible and we just eat out a handful of times a month.  Our grocery and eating out budget combined is about $8-900 a month.  When I cut back on eating out our grocery bills just go up, so it tends to be similar regardless. (We eat vegetarian and I cook everything from scratch at home)  My husband and I almost never buy clothes for ourselves.  Or shoes.  The kids clothes ALL come from Value Village (we also donate a lot of clothes and toys to goodwill), though I buy their clothes new.  We don't have cable and have a low phone plan.  We don't ever pay for childcare (we do babysitting exchanges with friends and neighbors - no local family).  I pack lunches for myself and my kindergartener.

We put $15k a year into my 401k.  We already have a robust emergency fund so I tend to put at least $100 into savings per pay period and then use that to fund bigger expenses like car insurance payment (every six months) or a vacation.  Despite occasional use of savings our net worth is growing steadily.[/quote]

How is your mortgage so low for a rowhouse?[/quote]

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