Anonymous wrote:take home (after fully funding 401 K plan, health insurance, taxes)
11000
PITI $4200
Earthquake and car insurance $350
food $500
Exercise $250
entertainment $300
clothes/hair skin care $350
home repair/garden $1000 (redid the garden this year and live in an old home- something is always breaking)
Bills (water, elec, gas, water, internet) $225
travel vacation $250
misc between 200 and 400
giving 250
additional savings about 2800/mo

No car payment, done with student loans, no school payments or daycare

you must live in LA

take home (after fully funding 401 K plan, health insurance, taxes)
11000
PITI $4200
Earthquake and car insurance $350
food $500
Exercise $250
entertainment $300
clothes/hair skin care $350
home repair/garden $1000 (redid the garden this year and live in an old home- something is always breaking)
Bills (water, elec, gas, water, internet) $225
travel vacation $250
misc between 200 and 400
giving 250
additional savings about 2800/mo

No car payment, done with student loans, no school payments or daycare

Anonymous wrote:We're a bit below $180K - around $150K. One working parent. One SAHM 3 children

$8000 take home (after taxes, 401k, health ins, flex plan)
$2800 Mortgage
$600 Groceries (many vegetarian meals from scratch)
$525 Utilities (gas, elec. water, phone, internet)
$450 Gasoline
$125 Car insurance
$250 Kids activities
$75 Pool/Tennis club
$350 Synagogue
$200 Eating Out/Movies
$200 Clothes (lots of hand me down, thrift stores)
$150 Gifts (that includes gifts within the family)
$100 House Maintenance/Decor
$100 Car Maintenance
$835 Roth IRA
$500 College Fund
$250 Travel
$500 Miscellaneous/Charity

I like this budget - it seems very balanced between fixed expenses (house, utilities), savings (college fund and Roth IRA over and above 401K) and I like that you have budgeted for the things that make life worth living (travel, eating out/mivues) and that you have budgeted for clothes and gifts.

Anonymous wrote:About $9000 after maxing out 401k and healthcare costs

Mortgage 1,900
Student loans 2,000
Investment property mort and fee 1,100
Childcare 1,500
Car 400
Cable, utilities, 450 (includes prorated water bill)
Commuting and gas 350
Food 750
Formula & diapers 400
Yard 125
Cleaners 250
Savings 500
Misc household/clothes 400

Needless to say, we are aggressively paying down debt. The car will be paid in full in a few months, the student loans in 15 months (yay!!). Then we will increase retirement savings/investments, fund the 529s (DCs are under 3 so still have time to catch up) and save to buy another investment property.

This is similar to how we operate too. Bought an investment property before paying off student loans. Now I'm aggressively paying down and we hope to save for another property after the loans are gone.

I'm surprised how little many of you spend on the shopping/household supplies/misc category. Do you actually track your spending? We are not big spenders and I find it hard to keep this under $800 a month and it is often higher. This includes: Costco trips, clothes, Amazon purchases, and sometimes bigger-ticket items like a new piece of furniture.

Wait, no, it's 100 in life insurance, not a second personal budget. Sorry!

Extra personal in there

10k take home after retirement, taxes, and health. Includes $9k in salary plus $1k net after expenses in rental property.

3100 Mortgage PITA
1200 Food (groceries, lunches, coffee)
1000 Savings
800 Entertainment (restaurants, theater, pool, parties)
600 Home Expenses (cleaning, maintenance, improvements)
600 Auto for 2 old cars (gas, parking, insurance, repairs)
600 Bills (cable, Internet, tv, utilities)
400 Education (tutoring, camps, books)
400 Enrichment (sports, activities, lessons)
300 Gifts (Xmas, birthdays, charities)
300 Shopping (clothes, housewares, extras)
200 Health and Fitness (copays, yoga, sports equipment)
200 Vacation (2 modest trips with family, camping)
100 Personal (haircuts, grooming, dry cleaning)
100 Pets (food, vet, sitting)
100 Personal

Anonymous wrote:LMAO. "Poor." We make $141K pre-tax. DH puts 11% of his $101K salary into his 401K and I don't save anything out of my $40K salary because I only work to pay for private school and groceries.

Mortgage is $950/month.
Healthcare, I think is about $400/month.
Childcare is $200/month.
Tuition for private school is $1600/month.
Groceries are $1200/month.
Phones (all mobile) are $180/month.
Internet $60/month
Gas is $400/month (we commute)
No gym, no car payments (both cars are luxury cars but are ten years old, bought new back then), no credit card debt or student loans. We're not saving for college; that's why they go to private school, so they can earn scholarships. We'd be comfortable paying the same tuition we do now or even a bit more when the time comes, but if they want to go to a $50K/yr school, they're going to have to help pay for it.

We shop and go out some but don't really keep track. We haven't taken a real vacation in 7 years but will be taking one this summer. We're not rich or anything but I think we're doing okay.

You VERY obviously don't live in or near DC.

I'm late to the party with this response, but literally googled the subject line and found this forum today. It truly is difficult somewhat to live comfortable on 190K annually. Some may view these as first world problems, but hey we all have problems of some type. I'm actually in the process of making tax adjustments so we don't have a huge bill at the end of the year going forward. I'm open to advice on how to better manage my budget which is what I assume most people on here were seeking.

Within a four week span, Take home (biweekl) for two working parents plus a monthly paycheck equals $10,720. Both of us receive annual bonuses at or above 10% of our salary, and of course if you're on a bi-weekly pay period you've probably noticed that you receive 2 additional pay checks annually (around April and October). I budget monthly which means that I exclude the 2 additional pay checks both of receive during year from the monthly budget (4 checks total). They goes immediately into savings along with the bonuses. I must preface this by saying that 2016 is the first year that we're seeing this type of income because my wife is working full time again.


Income:

Take home 4 weeks - 10,720

Expense Budget:
2239 - Mortgage/Property Tax/Home Insurance
128 - Cable / Internet (UVERSE)
200 - Electrical (utility)
131 - Car Insurance (paid semi annually for 2 vehicles)
206 - Medical Insurance (paid w/ after tax income)
96 - Dental Insurance (paid w/ after tax income)
205 - Cell phone (2 smart phones AT&T)
40 - Dog insurance
10 - Netflix
1505 - Childcare
1163 - Student loans
24 - Trash
30 - Home alarm
30 - Pest control
360 - Car note (1 vehicle)
145 - Personal grooming (haircuts, nails done, etc)
240 - Fuel (2 vehicles)
600 - Groceries
35 - Water
80 - Gas
150 - HOA (paid in advance for this year, so it's not a cost at the month)
662 - Misc (Flexible spending for household goods, supplies for the baby, etc)
500 - Monthly allowance for personal spending (250 each) Covers personal spending like fast food, shopping, etc.
2000 - Savings

I'm finding that my household take home will need to be reduced so that we can reduce our annual tax liability. Currently we are projected to owe 4K at year end in federal taxes. The IRS recommends both us have 600 withheld bi-weekly for federal taxes in order to meet out tax obligation. Gonna start that next year, and contribute more to my 401K.

HHI = 195k

Mortgage = $3,200 (bought a house to grow into with good schools)
Healthcare Premiums = $500
Childcare = $1,600
Utilities = $200
Cable/Phone Plan = $350
Student Loans = $600 (for grad degrees, college was paid for)
Gas/Metro = Maybe $100/month (DH and I both work from home most of the time)
Food = $1,000
Eating Out = $200

That is $7,750 after putting away 5% with matching toward retirement. Plan to increase this with student loan and daycare payments later.

Cars are paid off. We are super lucky that both sets of grandparents are putting 5k/year into a college fund for DC.

We end up with a few grand extra each month for miscellaneous house repairs, savings, gifts, donations, etc. My two "extra" pay checks and tax return go into savings or paying down debt.

We feel lucky even though we're not DCUM rich.

Interesting topic.

- Take home approximately $8400 (estimated average per year) after funding retirement and pension fund for the spouse. One spouse gets paid biweekly and there are 2 additional paychecks of about $6200 per year. That are not tracked, and we plan on spending that money on modest vacations and/or paying for credit cards if we exceeded our budgets through the year. That's our fallback money.

It's broken down in 2 forms:

- $2600 in savings: This savings fund is being built to buy our second house (hopefully a single family).

- $5800 in expenses:
- $2170 in mortgage + taxes + insurance + HOA
- $1200 in 2 car payments (both are new and were bought with 0 down...this is where it is pinching us).
- $300 to service a HELOC.
- $600 on food related expenses (we try to keep these very low).
- $140 on all utilities (Estimated: I keep them low very aggressively).
- $250 on gas and tolls (unfortunately one spouse has to travel quite a bit for work).
- $200 on kids activities (only daughter - we spend freely to put her in Tae Kwando, Arts, dance, swimming classes)
- $100 on personal care
- $150 on clothing and household essentials (again, we keep this very low by buying less and only as needed)
- $100 on education materials
- $120 on car insurance (got a really nice deal from the 21st century)
- $110 on media ($40 on cell, $50 Internet, $20 on netflix. No cable and no fancy carrier...again, we save a boatload of money here).
- $350: Remaining free money to be used for various purposes - mainly anticipated for household and auto maintenance/repairs etc.

You can see already that we are running a very tight budget despite having a decent take home income. This year for example, we have overspent some $3K already and we cannot use the full $6.2K for vacations. We need to compensate our savings fund that money because that's essentially where it was borrowed from.

If we had another kid and/or a bigger house, our expenses would be really high. In fact we are not paying for childcare at all, and yet, the budget is stretched thin. If we have a second child, we might even go in the red. We are really waiting for the auto loans to fall off (1 and 2.5 years respectively) before having a second child.

Our savings are nonnegotiable - we really treat that as life or death. Unless we save $30K after-tax, there is no point in having a high income really. Our mortgage is also a 15 year mortgage (in 3rd year), which is what makes the mortgage payment a little high.

Dang, some of you have really low mortgages. We splurged a bit but bought a long term home that made spending the extra money worth it. Don't need to worry about major repairs, upgrades or additions, but I'm certainly jealous of your note.

HHI of $9800/month after health insurance, flexible spending account, taxes, 401K and life insurance.

Our budget for our family of 4 consists of :

Mortgage - $3300
Utilities - $300
Verizon - $180
Childcare - $2000
College Savings - $500
Car Payments/Insurance - $900
Food/Household items (aka Costco) - $1400
Gas - $400 (hard to budget but a lot of our gas is reimbursed)

This leaves us about $1k a month for things like clothes, entertainment, weekend trips, and unforeseen costs (lawn mower died last month, for example). We are fortunate to receive decent bonuses twice a year which we put towards savings accounts and major purchases (new bedroom furniture last year, vacation next year). It works, and we certainly understand how privileged we are, but I'd be lying if I said we didn't feel super squeezed at times. I guess the more $ you make, the more expenses you tend to take on. The golden handcuffs!

We make 195-200K.

$2500 in rent
$1200 in groceries at most, including household items (paper towels, shampoo), eating out (including everything from dinner to coffee)
$100 gas
$130 car insurance
$400 utilities
$550 student loans
$325 car payment
$150 medical - people AND pets, including pet food (this is rounding way up)
$70 life insurance, rental insurance
$250 entertainment/babysitting/clothing
$250 miscellaneous (airfare spread across the year, that expensive humidifier we just bought, parking tickets, etc...)
$3,500 + any extra goes to savings: maxing out 401-K match (at about $1,300/month) and the rest is down-payment savings.

We have no childcare, because kid is elementary aged and I work PT.

Take Home is about $7000/month after savings, etc.

2000 Mortgage
335 Car
575 Childcare
180 Insurance
450 Utilities (gas, electric, water, phone, internet, cable, cell)
600 Food/Household supplies
175 Gas/Metro
400 House cleaning/lawn care/ maintenance
300 Restaurants
200 Cash
200 Activities (Agility class, pool membership, school activities)
150 Personal (Hair, clothes, etc.)
400 Fun (vacations, movies, etc)
50 Charity
250 Random miscellaneous

So, that comes to about $6300 per month