400+K. Bring home 17K after maxing out retirement accounts.

4K on mortgage on primary home
2K on mortgage on second home
1K utilities (phone, electric, gas, water)
1K groceries
1K clothes, health, beauty
1K house stuff
1K travel
1K kid activities
$500 a month on housekeeper
$500 a month pets
2K savings (529 + savings bonds)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Divorced mom if 2 kids in college

$180K HHI

10-11K/mth

I go into my savings for college about $8K/year.

We're somewhere in that $200k HHI and $10-12k/month spending camp. Crazy to see all these reported $500K+ HHI and $10-15k monthly spending. We were spending ~$6k/month a few years ago when we were still living in an apartment and didn't have a kid. Now we have a house and a kid in daycare with more on the way. Sometimes those two things intersect like when our toddler jammed something down our bathroom drain (we learned later), clogged it up, and then the drain pipe split open when the plumbers came out to snake it. That was about $4,500 to cut open the ceiling, replace pipes, drywall it all back together, etc.

I will say if these spending amounts are just people estimating then I don't put much stock in them. If you actually keep a budget, track your spending, or are looking at bank statements then OK.

I’m pretty confident in my answer on both sides of the ledger: credit card bills tracking spending and investment accounts tracking growing savings.

We earn around 220. Take home about 10k a month. Spend about 9k right now. Planning to earn more soon through a work promotion

Mortgage 2,890
Food all in 2k (6 people)
Monthly expenses 1,300
Gas/cars- 500
kids activities, entertainment, clothes and shoes (for 6)- 1k

Feels tight right now.

We bring in about 22k a month after taxes/401ks/insurance

Ideally we spend about 15k or so. $4700 of that is PITI.

We don't have a mortgage, so our only expenses are really the recurring ones and tuition at around 40k a year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're in a pricey stage of life. We have two toddlers in full time childcare, plus we just bought a house a couple years ago so we're at peak mortgage, too. We're spending every dollar right now - about $12k a month. HHI $210k. We have a healthy emergency fund ($40k), an okay amount saved for retirement ($150k), and no debt besides our mortgage. We're only saving enough right now to get our retirement match.

You should have double for retirement now. When we were in your stage, we had about 300 for retirement combined. Same income as you (then).

PP here. Yes, I recognize it should be more. That’s why I said “okay” rather than good.

We overextended on our house (a decision I don’t regret at ALL - we’re in our forever home and we love it) and honestly we kinda think of it as a bit of our best egg/retirement. Our house is $900k and the mortgage is 3%. We all make our trade offs. We also have no intention of retiring early. Our parents worked well into our 70s, I’d anticipate the same for us.

We all make our trade offs. And $150k in retirement’s not nothing.

HHI of 700-800. We spend ~$20k a month. PTIT is $7500 and we designate ~$5k/month for vacations/incidentals. 2 kids 1 in daycare and 1 in public K.

Anonymous wrote:We're in a pricey stage of life. We have two toddlers in full time childcare, plus we just bought a house a couple years ago so we're at peak mortgage, too. We're spending every dollar right now - about $12k a month. HHI $210k. We have a healthy emergency fund ($40k), an okay amount saved for retirement ($150k), and no debt besides our mortgage. We're only saving enough right now to get our retirement match.

You should have double for retirement now. When we were in your stage, we had about 300 for retirement combined. Same income as you (then).

$475k dinks who are expecting

$4200 housing
$1200 groceries
Paid off only car
$1000 travel
$3000 discretionary

So like ~10k a month? It'll increase later this year

Anonymous wrote:Divorced mom if 2 kids in college

$180K HHI

10-11K/mth

I go into my savings for college about $8K/year.

We're somewhere in that $200k HHI and $10-12k/month spending camp. Crazy to see all these reported $500K+ HHI and $10-15k monthly spending. We were spending ~$6k/month a few years ago when we were still living in an apartment and didn't have a kid. Now we have a house and a kid in daycare with more on the way. Sometimes those two things intersect like when our toddler jammed something down our bathroom drain (we learned later), clogged it up, and then the drain pipe split open when the plumbers came out to snake it. That was about $4,500 to cut open the ceiling, replace pipes, drywall it all back together, etc.

I will say if these spending amounts are just people estimating then I don't put much stock in them. If you actually keep a budget, track your spending, or are looking at bank statements then OK.

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t seem people are factoring the big expenses. Vacations can add up. Also how about new cars or home renovations. I feel like we update a room in our house every 2-3 years. A car every 5 or so years.

We make 440-550k depending on bonus. Our regular spending is about 11k. But that doesn’t include vacations and car/home projects. Those are big one off things but they happen frequently and are big line items.

We are the PP with the 550k-700k HHI. We did all our home renovations when we first moved in and we recently re-renovated our master bath, kitchen counters, cabinet doors, and refinished our staircase with wrought iron balusters. We did most of the second round of renovations ourselves. DH and I redid our master bath in 6 months. We installed the cabinet doors ourselves and I redid the back splash by myself. I refinished the staircase by myself and DH and I worked together to install the wrought iron balusters. Material cost for the master bath was 7k, 500 for the backsplash, 8k for new quartz countertops, 5k for new solid cherry flat cabinet doors, and 1200 for wrought iron balusters, plus 150 for stains, paint, etc. However, these costs are reasonable given that we had budgeted 12k for vacations and because of COVID we did not go on a vacation for two years.

As for cars, we drive our cars for at least a decade.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t seem people are factoring the big expenses. Vacations can add up. Also how about new cars or home renovations. I feel like we update a room in our house every 2-3 years. A car every 5 or so years.

We make 440-550k depending on bonus. Our regular spending is about 11k. But that doesn’t include vacations and car/home projects. Those are big one off things but they happen frequently and are big line items.

I factored those in, we are just spending less than you are. I budget $1k/month for vacations ($12k/year total.) Cars are bought when we get a bonus and we keep them for 10 years. We don't do major home renovations. We fix or replace things that are broken. Appliances, replace an old couch, get some new carpet, etc. But we feel like new kitchens and bathrooms are a total scam/waste of money. Same with redecorating just for the sake of doing so.

I was OP. That is why I factor in 1-2k a month for one offs.

Most months we don't need them but if we need to drop 10k on a new hvac system thats only 5 months of my "budget"

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t seem people are factoring the big expenses. Vacations can add up. Also how about new cars or home renovations. I feel like we update a room in our house every 2-3 years. A car every 5 or so years.

We make 440-550k depending on bonus. Our regular spending is about 11k. But that doesn’t include vacations and car/home projects. Those are big one off things but they happen frequently and are big line items.

I factored those in, we are just spending less than you are. I budget $1k/month for vacations ($12k/year total.) Cars are bought when we get a bonus and we keep them for 10 years. We don't do major home renovations. We fix or replace things that are broken. Appliances, replace an old couch, get some new carpet, etc. But we feel like new kitchens and bathrooms are a total scam/waste of money. Same with redecorating just for the sake of doing so.

We make 180K. We take home about 10K a month after taxes (some of our before tax income goes to pensions, health care premiums). We spend about 5-6K a month and save the rest. Our mortgage and property taxes run us about 1700 a month and we spend about 1K on food.

It doesn’t seem people are factoring the big expenses. Vacations can add up. Also how about new cars or home renovations. I feel like we update a room in our house every 2-3 years. A car every 5 or so years.

We make 440-550k depending on bonus. Our regular spending is about 11k. But that doesn’t include vacations and car/home projects. Those are big one off things but they happen frequently and are big line items.