Newly stumbled upon this site while searching for additional financial reading and the availability of a forum sealed the deal. I suspect I will be spending a lot of time here catching up on the archives.
What I wanted to start with was a second (ad infinitum) set of eyes to give our money a once over and maybe see the things I am not seeing.
For the faint of heart, there are a few budgetary items in here that I see very well, they may alarm you, have faith that I am trying or feel free to poke and tease me into action to improve them.
First a little about us, we are an old married couple of 28 and 29. I work as a brewer, hourly with plenty of overtime (and beer!) always available, in the wonderfully low cost of living Pittsburgh, my wife works as a salaried HR director. Although it varies depending on my hours worked, I count about 80k of household income per year with an expected raise for me coming shortly that could increase slightly.
We purchased a house in May 2012, 2 bed/1 bath just under 1000 sq ft, basement, 2 car (barely!) garage, on a tiny tenth of an acre for 55,700. I came into our marriage 4 years ago with about 20k in debt between 12k in student loans, 5k personal loan, and 3k credit card debt. Everything is paid with 1200 left on the student loan scheduled to be paid on June 21. At the same time we will make a payment to the mortgage to be able to drop PMI and have 44k left owed on the mortgage at 4.125%
After taxes, insurance and retirement funding (16% for me to Simple IRA, 12% for wife to 401k), we count on at least 3700 in take home pay every 4 weeks.
All spending tracked through GNUCash, all costs listed are monthly unless otherwise noted.
PITI on house is 450
Water/Sewer: 75
Electricity: 50
Gas: 50
Trash: 25
No cable, netflix, etc or home internet
Two Cell Phones, one 70 T-Mobile fully unlimited pre-paid, used as home internet, one minutes only less than 15
Groceries: 300
Dining: ...200, eep
Alcohol: 150 (despite free work beer and wife's only desire for cheap box wine, this still seems way too high)
1 Dog: 200 (this includes food, vet, and boarding during travel)
2 Cars (things are going to get scary), 2003 Ford Taurus 190k, 2006 Suzuki Aerio SX 50k
Insurance: 30
Repairs and Maintenance: Irregular but figure an average of 75, I do all maintenance short of engine and transmission internals
Gas: 300 sad face
Registrations & Inspections: 200/year
Clothes: 100
Misc Entertainment and Travel: 100
Gifts: 100
Housewares/Home Repair/Toiletries: 100
Medical/Dental/Vision: 300
This totals 2700, the additional money is split between additional student loan payments (again this month only), additional mortgage principal, and automatic savings account transfers.
Almost all spending is put on a Discover card which never carries a month to month balance, and cashback is put toward the balance when it can be.
Current positive assets. 12k liquid emergency fund earning a sad 0.50%, 3k 401k, 3k Simple IRA.
I think that is enough to work with for a first post, if you have read to the end, I appreciate you very much and look forward to any comments you might have. I will update another post later with some of our financial goals and targets.