$350 a month for gas? Face punch. Your non-car-related expenses look pretty reasonable (except for Verizon), but your cars are crazy. You are spending $1400 every month just to get from point A to point B. That is more than your mortgage payment.
Oh trust me I know. I ended up creating a 'Auto' category on YNAB since so much money goes there. I'm so tired of buying tires what seems to be every year. Also it's a minimum of $350 a month. During the summer last year we had two different months where it went up to over $500 *cringe*. I vanpool three days a week which is free (voucher from work pays for it). I hate driving. We have a 1.5 hour gap between our shifts so any lowering of the gas bill means a raise in the childcare section.
We live 45-60 mins from work. It seemed like a good plan pre kids. I was already used to it because that was how far I had always driven. The housing market is crazy right now. I bought my house for 176k in 2013. We were considering selling a year ago and the realtor said if we made the changes we were talking about she would put it up for $350k. The market has kept going up since then. There are only 6 places for sale under 500k in the city we work right now that have over 1/4 acre lots and one of them is just a lot. It's not the best area either and I wouldn't want to actually live here.
Other suggestions: find something cheaper than Verizon that will work near you. There are many threads here on this topic
Will do. Just got a smart phone after 2nd baby and would like to go back to a regular one.
Read the thread on how to convert your spouse to mustachianism. Set a good example by bringing your lunch to work and not buying expensive things. My husband is a car guy too, albeit with slightly less expensive taste, so I feel your pain. Try to get him to give up at least one vehicle: four of them for 2 people is crazy. See if he can buy the guns and the dirt bike used, out of his spending money. Put your foot down about a new truck though.
We both do bring lunches and I just convinced him to get a coffee pot instead of buying coffee all the time. My goal is to bring our dining out expenses to < $100 a month.
I'm not going to get much traction on the vehicle front. He had three when we got together (car, truck, and jeep) and he had a dirtbike. Now he's just upgraded. We work opposite shifts so we both need commuter cars and convincing him that he doesn't need a truck is pretty much impossible. The wheeler isn't street legal. It is strictly a very expensive hobby/toy.
Basically my plan is to convince him that we don't need to move or buy a new truck for as long as possible. The dirtbike will almost certainly be purchased used. Right now I basically budget $50 a month for guns/ammo and he has agreed to a two year waiting period since I agreed to let him build an fancy AR this past year. I'm just going to let that build up so I don't strangle him later down the road. He is always good about talking with me before buying big things. I just want a number - how many guns/toys is enough?
$200 childcare is amazing, it would be $2000 in my area
For full time care it would be $2400. I pay my sister in law $200 a month to watch them for 2 hours a day three days a week. This limits their time in the car and allows me to vanpool those days. The other two days we swap kids in the parking lot at work and he goes in an hour early- I work 1st shift he works 2nd.
I think you are overestimating the value of your vehicles.
Probably. I'm not to big on vehicles and didn't look any of them up. I basically just knocked money off from what we bought them for. Un-mustachianly enough our longest owned vehicle at this time is my 2013 Impala which we bought a year old.
I estimated 12k for the camping trailer(just got an offer for over this), 3k for the cargo trailer(wedding gift-husband says 4k so it's probably closer to 3), 12k for the truck (bought less than 2 years ago for 16k), 8k for my car (bought 3 years ago for 13k), and 10k for the crawler (we traded a jeep that we paid 10.5k for it. husband says it's worth 20k. What he really means is 'guy who built it spent 20k').
That is 45k so I'm guessing I included the accord in there for a total of 55k. Oops. Nice catch!
What are the trailers used for?
The cargo trailer is a glorified shed. Every so often people ask to borrow it when they move. We used it to haul quads to the dunes one time, to haul wood one time, and trimmed branches to the dump a couple times. This past weekend we used to to haul all the stuff we had to buy to fix up our rental. It's mostly a portable shed where we store crap we should get rid of. It was a wedding present from my Dad.
The camping trailer we just bought last year. It was a really good deal (10.5k) and husband had been trying to convince me for awhile. Friends had just gotten one for twice that cost which made it seem so reasonable and that's about all the excuses I have for this purchase. It was not well thought out. We went out once for what was supposed to be a 4 night trip and bailed after 2 because we were not having fun.
Luckily it appears that we really did get an amazing deal and he keeps seeing them up for 20k. He posted it up for sale recently with the whole 'blowing through our savings on the rental house' and today he got an offer for 15k. Will it actually sell for that? Who knows. But this one we're actively working on getting rid of.
Is the Accord comfortable with 2 car seats?
Yes! I don't care for the idea of owning vehicles that we can't fit everyone in. We have one front facing and one rear.
Anyway - I will look into cell phone options for my area. I've already changed my selection on my tax info to 'Married -2'. For some reason I was making that way more complicated than it was. I like your way better.