So the wife and I have made some serious dents to our debt load and are still looking to trim the fat in our budget. I'm going to lay it out here for you guys and hope for some feedback! Feel free to face punch.
mortgage: $560 (we technically rent to own, more to follow)
utilities: $180 (Our home is all electric and this would be an average month)
credit card: $100 (I've actually been working hard on this and our current balance is >$500)
personal loan: $180 ( pre- mustache camper purchase, 2 years and about 4k @ 8% left on note)
farm expenses: $300-$500 (ouch)
cell phones: $140 (2 smart phones, waiting on an iphone unlock then switching from att to airvoice)
home phone: $40
satellite internet: $54 (only option other than dial up where we live)
tivo & netflix: $20 (no cable, antenna feeding into a tivo, tivo sub is $4/ month)
grocery: $700 (family of 5, I would like to improve this)
gas: $240 (wife and I both spend about $30 per week per vehicle)
auto insurance: $95 (3 vehicles, 1 with full coverage, it's paid for, time for change?)
savings acount: $500
Misc: $200-$500? (where does this money go each month??? walgreens, beer, oil changes, impulse purchases for the kids, birthday parties for kids friends, kids sport activities, Mcdonalds, etc, etc)
DAYCARE: $0 (oh ya!)
take home pay: wife and I currently each putting 10% in to work 401k's, health insurance comes out of the wife's check and we are left with about:
$4200
As you can see we are raising 3 kids on a gross of about 75k a year. As far as the house situation goes, we built our house on my wife's family farm. The farm is owned by her grandmother. Grandma was really excited about the idea of us living on the farm, but the farm has never had a bank loan against it and has been in the family for about 5 generations. So grandma cashed out some investments and loaned us 80k and surveyed off about 8 acres and put it all in a trust to be titled to us upon her death. So, grandma owns the house. The house, barn and acreage appraised for 140k after we finished building. We have access to the entire property with about 140 acres, woods, pasture and fishing pond. We've been here almost ten years now and it is a great place to raise our kids. But, with the farm has come a few horses, a pony, chickens and several dogs..... We are also about 9 miles from town which adds to our commutes. We both work in town, I'm about 10 miles from work and the wife is about 12 miles from hers.
I guess the reason I'm coming to you guys is when I run the numbers, we should have a decent amount left at the end of the month, but we never do. I've been trying to break down the misc spending category of our budget and find what is really eating up our income.
Please give me some advice!
Jake