Do you have a finished basement? If so rent it out.

Eating out is a colossal waste of money.

And I agree with the PP about eating out being the biggest and most insidious drain on a monthly budget. Even McD's for three is $15 and if you're doing that 2-3x/wk on sports night or weekends, plus going out 2x/wk to a sit-down restaurant, you're approaching $175/wk on dining out that is totally unnecessary.

I've stopped buying fast food and now buy a 12" Subway sandwich for my two kids to share, and keep water bottles in the trunk. $5.35 1-2x/ week does not break my budget and it's healthy(er) than McDs.

OP, you should go back to every item in your budget and classify it as "want" or "need". Be ruthless in how many items you call "needs". Identify what parts of that "need" might actually be a "want" and cut those parts until you really have an accurate picture.

Grab your most recent tax returns. Look at your HHI and your tax due. What % of your HHI is your tax bill, after all your deductions/ exemptions/ etc? Now look at your paycheck and what is the % being withheld for federal and state taxes? Assuming you didn't add/lose deductions and exemptions in the past two years, those %'s should be within 1-2 points of each other or you need to adjust your withholdings. You can give whatever exemption you want in your request (mine says I have 6 kids!) to get the math right and you won't be in trouble with the IRS unless you SERIOUSLY under-withhold and have to write a monster check at year end to catch up.

Is one of you in sales? You realize commissions are taxed way higher no matter how many exemptions you claim, right? I think it's between 33%-50%. That's why I have to claim so many kids on my W-9 or whatever its called to get the total tax withheld by year end to even get close and I STILL got a $6000 refund this year for last year. And I make $30K less than you and I'm a divorced mom of three.

My take home salary is $4800/mo and my bonus is paid once per year in March. My mtg is same as yours but I don't have a car expense (company car, gas, ins all paid and personal use is okay) or college loans, but I do have $600 in childcare for my two youngest (county afterschool program), $600/mo in food, I save 5% in my 401k at work to get the 100% company match, I withhold $200/mo for my medical deductible HSA, $400/mo for childcare pretax.

I was looking at my cash flow wrong until I stopped subtracting childcare costs out of take home since I pre-paid them. Yes, the cash flow is what it is, but if you're timely with filing for reimbursement, you at least get that money back in your pocket within 2 weeks. If you don't set aside for childcare pre-tax, you should provided you're both working.

Our 2 iPhones (on AT&T) are $130 a month-and we're likely switching to T-mobile soon which will get us down to &120. Even if you're not willing to give up data you should be able to trim a nice chunk off there. Make sure you've investigated discounts you're eligible for-Feds are eligible for a discount, many alumni programs can get discounts, teachers, etc.

I'm also confused about the withholdings comment. The IRS has a good calculator that will tell you exactly how to set your withholdings so you don't owe or get a huge refund. If you really can't, then at least use any refund you get to pay off the credit cards which will free up some cash for you.

Cell phone: I have an iPhone 5 and DD12 has a 4. We share a plan and it's $101.63 every month with Verizon. Unlimited text/ minutes and 4 GB data that we never exceed.

$200/mo is way too high for two lines. Trust me, I was a relic hold out on getting my own cell phone (i have a work one) until the new rates came out Oct 2012.

OP, what's your definition of "broke"? Different people think of broke differently. By broke do you mean you have to live off credit cards the last week of the month, or by broke do you mean you're not able to put anything in savings and every penny goes just to paying all your bills?

I'm sort of just confused on where your money goes. Our HHI is $160k and we seem to have similar expenses ($2300 rent, $900 school tuition, $500 for two car payments, $145 car insurance, $250 phones (we have 4 with data, so our bill is high), $100 cable/internet, $77 power, $60 gas, and probably $600 for food. We net $4091 per pay period, so on a 4 week month, we net $8182, but on those stray 5 week months (like this one) we net $12273. But most months, around $8100. We very, very rarely feel pinched.

I agree that networthiq is a useful tool, but it won't help OP at all with her problems.

OP - I also don't see things listed like, hair cuts, copays, clothes, dry cleaning, etc. I suspect things are just slipping out w/o you realizing. This happened to me for a long time. Start tracking!

It's not budgeting but ill plug networthiq.com for tracking net worth... It's no frills and simple as it gets but that's kind of what I like about it. Ten minutes a month of effort and I can see my whole financial picture.

We have two iPhones w/ unlimited data plans at Sprint for $143/month (including taxes etc).

Also - I didn't like mint.com, but I'm loving LearnVest.

Adjusting our withholdings (increasing the number) was the first thing we did after we closed on our house as first time homebuyers. It made a big difference.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are just guessing at your bills. Register with mint.com or YNAB (google it) and tie your accounts to it. It will log every transaction which can then be categorized (it does most of that automatically -- Safeway = groceries, etc.). After a month you will see places where you can lower expenses. Then tackle everything like insurance, cell phone plans, extra monthly draws that you have on your account that you really weren't thinking about (fee for on-line banking for example, subscription to Angies list, or Tivo, stuff like that). Lower your standing bills, and then reduce your discretionary expenses by buying cheaper or postponing gratification.

See if you can lower your student loan payments if they are Federal loans through the program that ties the payments to your income. GL!

Another vote for mint.com - when we went to one income, it was the only way to really track our expenses, and also get both of us on the same page (literally) to see exactly where every penny went. It's worth spending your weekend getting this set up and start to really see where expenses go. It also has a bill reminder feature so you can set up your repeating monthly expenses; it's a great way to look ahead and see what has to get paid out of the next paycheck, so you can more closely monitor cashflow.

Also, as another PP suggested, check your tax withholdings. Did you owe any taxes for 2012? Did you get a refund? If the latter, then you definitely need to adjust withholdings. Use the IRS W-4 calculator to try and get a read on your 2013 tax liability. Now's a good time to do this as you're partly through the year and have time to see a real difference from withholdings, both federal and state.

I meant to do mint.com like 3 years ago. I am definitely going to try that!

As for taxes, we cannot lower our withholding.

What do you mean you can't?

Anonymous wrote:We have $155K HHI and we are broke. I need advice - maybe I can cut spending somehow? Here are some of our bills:

$2500 - mortgage
$1600 - childcare
$450 - 2 cars
$45 - internet (no cable here)
$200 - 2 cell phones (no land line)

Get rid of at least one of your cars.

If monthly take home is $4,800 net of mortgage and you're broke, I'd write down every single expenditure for a month. Everything. That will give you the full picture.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Losing the gym is easy. It's a luxury.
The cell phone plan is way too high. We have four phones on ours and pay only $100. That's $200 right there.

The car with free gas is worth it I guess, but only because you'd have to pay out to get a replacement. One of my family's worst line items is gas because our Acura MDX is the suck on gas mileage -- but we barely spend $200 per month. The second car payment has to go. It was a big mistake to take on debt for it. Sell it and buy a used Honda or Toyota with >70K miles. You will probably be able to find one for less than $5K, it will be reliable, the maintenance is cheap, and you can reduce your insurance coverage because you don't need comprehensive on the POS you're going to be driving.

Are both of you working or just one? Because if only one spouse is working and he uses the company car and also pays $120 for parking, then it's not worth it. He can get up earlier and take public transportation and save you $320/month. Add that to the $250 once you get rid of the car loan and $200 from your cell phone and gym membership and you've got nearly $800 extra per month.

Please everyone tell me about your phone plans! What company?

AT&T
3 regular cell phones, no data, limited texts (200/month)
I'm not sure how many minutes--but we NEVER use them all.
We pay $80 something per month

AT&T
only one phone (mine) -- it's $29.99/month plus taxes so it comes to about $36 total -- no texting, no data -- just phone
my DH uses a blackberry and an Ipad he gets free from work