The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: rentalnewbie on December 18, 2018, 07:32:30 AM
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As the end of the year is coming, I thought I’d check on how much we spent this year and HOLY CRAP it was a lot.
I am almost ashamed to post this on MMM forum but we spent 80,000! I almost had a heart attack when I saw that number but….
- $15,336 was a big chunk to pay off my husband’s student loans, that is only the lump sum final payment we made, not the monthly payments we paid until it was done. Those loans we paid off in May and they ~$600 we were paying on them monthly will go away. We still have my student loans, however.
$6,827 is the mortgage on our rental (PITI only, there were some maintenance expenses in addition of course). I would argue this “doesn’t count” as our spending because it’s technically money that is being invested in the rental.
That leaves us with…$57,837, which is still a lot but it doesn’t give me a heart attack at least. We also saved around $40,000 this year for a down payment for our next and “forever” house; which will turn our current 2 bedroom house into rental #2.
With spending at $57,837 we would have a FIRE number of $1,445,925. Based on our current net worth, we are 17.2% of the way to FIRE. However, when we get closer the math will be quite different, as we plan on using mostly rental income and will just need to have enough cash flow to support our lifestyle. Also, I want to have paid off our primary residence, which we haven’t even bought yet. Either way, it’s nice to see how we are doing.
We’re currently 33 and originally had hoped for FIRE at 40 (not based on the math but as a goal), but now 45 seems more realistic for us. Not so much based on any math trajectory but just how I see it going.
How did everyone else do?
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Including a best-guess for the rest of December, about $15,900. Which is $30 more than my current yearly spending estimate- I've got to do a better job with my projections next year! :D
Annual totals:
Utilities $640
Rent $8920 (whew)
Groceries $1360
Eating Out $1860 (very spendy earlier in the year, got it down to less than 100/month more recently)
Shopping $800
Entertainment $480
Misc $380
I also bought a bike for about $375, and spent maybe $1100 on travel and my ceramics addiction hobby. (In theory, the ceramics will be net positive (or at least neutral) when I ever get around to setting up an Etsy shop and selling some things, but for now it's definitely in the expenses category.)
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Wow, this is a great topic (for me anyways). I have always tracked what we spend monthly and worked from a monthly budget but I rarely look back at the year! Man, oh man, we spent a LOT of money this year. $122k, I am in shock! In 2017 we spent ~$87k, we were a family of 3 for half the year and a family of 5 the other half. Now I wish I could go back far enough to see numbers from when it was just the 2 of us.
Mortgage/SL/Low interest debt = $33.6k ---- (I do not plan to take any of this with us into FIRE except taxes and insurance on the house)
Utilities/Food/Daycare (family of six) = $40k ---- (This should be cut in half or more by the time we FIRE as our plan is to wait until kids have graduated)
Kids Activities/Clothes/Haircuts/ect = $5.5k ---- (This will probably stay similar but as gifts or whatever to kids/grandkids)
Home/Auto Maintenance/Adult Clothing/Haircuts/ect = $11.5 ---- (This was high in 2018 due to replacing tires and windshields on both cars and me changing jobs/wardrobe requirements and going from huge pregnant to a weight that is lower than I have been for like 10 years. Will probably still plan a similar amount for FIRE to even out the heavy/lean years)
Farm = $4.5 ---- (I do want to garden but I do not want farm animals in FIRE so this should be cut down to almost nothing in FIRE)
Non-monthly expenses (property taxes, gifts, pet vet visits, vacations)= $12.5 (I plan to increase travel dramatically and decrease some of the other crap so I would imagine this number to stay the same or increase in FIRE)
House Remodel = $14k ---- (I want to downsize when we FIRE and I plan to buy a house that does not need very much/any work so this number should disappear).
So my anticipated FIRE numbers if I just adjust 2018 numbers
Housing = $6k
Utilities/Food = $12k
Kid/Grandkid money = $6k
Home/Auto maintenance, Clothing, Etc = $12k
Non-monthly expenses = $18k
FIRE expenses = $54k (plus health insurance & income taxes)
If we round that to $60k, that means we need $1.5 to FIRE, which my estimates have us hitting about 7 years before the current FIRE plan. If we decided to FIRE before the kids are out of the house we would probably need to rework some of the above expenses.
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We improved our personal balance sheet by about 175k split between mortgage reduction and investments. So glad I reallocated extra money to the mortgage this year. It was just a feeling around March and glad I listened to it.
We also had three fantastic vacations and made memories for a life time.
I'd say 2018 was a huge success and positioned us well for 2019. Hope everyone else had a good 2018.
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My spending will come in right at $17,800 all in for 2018.
This includes splitting the rent on a 1bed/1bath apartment in a HCOL area, and driving a 10 year old luxury sports car.
Savings rate should be a smidgen over 82.5%
ETA - Combined household spending $34,600 + ~$2,400 in health insurance premiums that come out pretax. A silver plan for two people would cost us about the same on the ACA exchange.
This would require $925k in investable assets to sustain @ 4% WR......a long way to go till fully FI here =)
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With almost 2 weeks to go I should end up a bit over 22k, when I was trying for 20k. A couple big vacations and some unanticipated vet bills pushed me over the goal. But on the bright side, I doubled my net worth, and I reached 1 year of gross salary in net worth, which feels good. And I hit a 50% savings rate for the second half of the year, which will continue into the new year. So I think 2018 was a good year!
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Worked it up this weekend and looks like we are at about 54k
11k of that was towards purchasing a car
We took several vacations and I feel we live a great life.
I estimate our savings will be 78k this year
Next year we will not have the car expense and I have made a few changes this month such as cutting cable, switched to a different cell phone plan, the wife has a free bus pass and has been using it most days so maybe 43k next year.
14k is just our principal and interest for the house and I do not plan to have that in retirement.
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
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@SlowAndSteady, I miss read a post =)
You all had me go back and look at our combined numbers.
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2018 turned out to be a good year - thanking my lucky stars and the support and inspiration found here in the MMM forum.
I am retired, Mr. R. is not. We have separate finances.
My total income in 2018 was 41K - spent 19K - saved 22K.
Expenditures included a two months trip to Europe, my car pmts and a second small loan (paid off $800), new cell and new computer. (slashed cell phone bill by half this year)
Income included $3K back in loan pmts for a loan I extended in 2017 and $1K from a side gig.
We'll see what happens in 2019.
May 2019 bring us all good luck - health and wealth:)
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I made two out of my three year long goals. Have the mortgage under $50,000 - done. Max out all of my retirement accounts - done. Have $10,000 in the bank - almost. I'll have it in February. I'm mostly satisfied with myself. Come January I'll look everything over again and set my goals for 2019.
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It was an expensive year, but we hit our investment goals. We also made two expensive improvements to our house. One was for solar, the other was for air conditioning. The solar has already resulted in a good savings & we have a reasonable period with which it will pay for itself. The air conditioning was a want, but as it gets hotter here, it was a huge improvement to quality of life.
Other big ticket expenses: we paid our taxes on the sale of our rental house (although, that came out of the profit, so not out of our 2018 income), and paid off our vacation house. That felt amazing.
In terms of day to day spending, we are close to on target, but have some areas we need to more closely monitor. Those areas for tighter focus in 2019 include: travel, summer camps, alcohol (blush), & a small cut back in dining out. We are mostly aligned on priorities, but would like to be smarter about our choices in these areas in 2019. We're also planning to increase our charitable giving, as our company has increase their match.
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It was a lower spend year for me than I was expecting earlier in the year. My total household (of me) spending was about $15,150. Savings rate was about 82%. This or next year will most likely be my last full year of employment, and I have some big expenses that I've put off around the house, so my savings rate will probably drop considerably next year if I even work the full year.
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We kicked a$$. We did a "buy nothing" year, with the exception of books and supplies for my consulting business. No clothes, no bags (I have a TERRIBLE handbag problem), no electronics, nothing non-essential at all. And we saved in the ballpark of $100,000, which is well over half of our income, possibly two-thirds. (I know...I should absolutely know our savings rate, but I just haven't worked up the numbers.)
But here's where I get face-punched: $75,000+ of that savings is sitting in bank accounts, not yet invested. (In the spirit of full disclosure, we have just under $100,000 sitting in the bank, since we already had over $20,000 in the bank at the end of 2017, plus $75,000 of 2018's savings.) With the market tanking and our FIRE date looming (mid-2019), we may just keep it where it is. Happy to hear any advice on this matter, though.
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It was a tough year for me, to be honest, lots of medical issues, but I am happy to be (almost) on the other side, and healthy and ready for 2019!
The good:
- my income was about $35k (most I've ever made!) (I work in a low paying industry)
- I opened an IRA in August, and have put in $1300 so far
- I have $3k in an "emergency fund"
The bad:
- I spent about $9k on medical expenses, and still owe $1k
- Because of my medical issues, and some unpaid time off work, I have about $2k on a 0% interest credit card that I am dumping all of my extra $$ into
Goals for next year:
- fully fund IRA
- don't have any more $7k surgeries! haha
- fix all of the issues with my car that I had to put off this year (suspension needs to be replaced, brake pads, windshield)
- save all of the $600 a month I was spending on medical bills. I've learned to live on much less this year because of my medical bills, and I don't feel deprived, or unhappy. Stoked to continue on this path, except funneling all of that extra money into savings!
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I'm really enjoying reading everyone's responses!
@2Birds1Stone @Rosy and @PoutineLover you all kicked ass! Now I'm feeling really ashamed at our high number.
@SheWhoWalksAtLunch I am already looking forward to paying off a mortgage on a house we are only browsing for now! Good for you!
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We don't track our expenses any more, so I'm not sure how we did regarding spending. Some highlights:
Hit 25x full-FIRE planned expenses in July
Started planning and networking for consulting work during the first few years of FIRE
Partner transitioned to part-time, with me to follow in 2019
Took about 100 hours of vacation in addition to using full accrual - lots of time off work!
Set up Donor Advised Fund to lock in tax break for charitable contributions during FIRE
Basically, in 2018 we slowed down at work and started to put the finishing touches on the 2019 FIRE plan. There's still work to be done, but it'll be a lot easier to get it done if we both have Fridays off from work.
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Had a great year of savings, this mustachian thing is really starting to add up!
The biggest point of pride this year is our savings rate. Over the last 4 years we have gone from 37%-->41%-->58%-->60%. Which means that this year the savings added up to a little over 100k. This was all done on a lower salary than the last two years and accomplished by dropping expenses.
Congrats to everyone and good luck in 2019!
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We missed our annual savings goal by $3K.
Not too bad considering we:
maxed out HSA contribution
maxed out IRAs contributions
consistently paid down our mortgage and now owe less than $10K (not really paid in advance before everyone jumps on that)
Made several thousand $$ from credit card churning
Came up with firm numbers for retirement spending a plan for the next 5(ish) years
had more than $10K of out of pocket medical expenses on top of premiums
I am still out of work and was not able to go back to work this year as planned (I am currently staying home as a full time caregiver to our son recovering from a bone marrow transplant and cancer)
I hope to start working early 2019 - if I had gotten a job this year we would have met all goals. I did use time I was not caring for my son to work on house projects that will be needed to sell our house. Part of our FIRE plan is to move.
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As the end of the year is coming, I thought I’d check on how much we spent this year and HOLY CRAP it was a lot.
I am almost ashamed to post this on MMM forum but we spent 80,000! I almost had a heart attack when I saw that number but….
- $15,336 was a big chunk to pay off my husband’s student loans, that is only the lump sum final payment we made, not the monthly payments we paid until it was done. Those loans we paid off in May and they ~$600 we were paying on them monthly will go away. We still have my student loans, however.
$6,827 is the mortgage on our rental (PITI only, there were some maintenance expenses in addition of course). I would argue this “doesn’t count” as our spending because it’s technically money that is being invested in the rental.
That leaves us with…$57,837, which is still a lot but it doesn’t give me a heart attack at least. We also saved around $40,000 this year for a down payment for our next and “forever” house; which will turn our current 2 bedroom house into rental #2.
With spending at $57,837 we would have a FIRE number of $1,445,925. Based on our current net worth, we are 17.2% of the way to FIRE. However, when we get closer the math will be quite different, as we plan on using mostly rental income and will just need to have enough cash flow to support our lifestyle. Also, I want to have paid off our primary residence, which we haven’t even bought yet. Either way, it’s nice to see how we are doing.
We’re currently 33 and originally had hoped for FIRE at 40 (not based on the math but as a goal), but now 45 seems more realistic for us. Not so much based on any math trajectory but just how I see it going.
How did everyone else do?
In the “throw down the gauntlet” section I started a thread for holding yourself openly accountable to spending in 2019. Feel free to join!
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This was a very interesting year with some big changes and big items that I don´t expect will be repeated in 2019.
Income before taxes between my day job and my side-gigs was up significantly at 96k :)
I have a very healthy pension-scheme at my new day job contributing 17,1% to my pension, so that is growing just fine and makes saving a significant chunk of my pay that much easier. And I like the job.
A big item this year; me and my girlfriend bought an extremely cheap apartment (for danish standards: 199000k for 742 square feet) in an otherwise hcol area, that we really wanted to live in. Turns out if you get the right housing this turns into a lcol area, as it has the lowest municipal tax rates in Denmark. We rented in Copenhagen inner city before, and moved a bit outside to get access to forest and ocean. The place we got is cheaper, including the monthly loan payments, than our former rental, and just knowing I am chipping away at the debt every month really makes me happy despite the 5k it cost in various levies to purchase the place.
Otherwise I really wised up and structured my finances significantly smarter that I used to ( I have been known to spend if the money is available ), so now I can´t touch my side gig money (As easily as I put them in an LLC) and I managed to save 55% of revenue. A good 27k that goes straight to my holding company that I use to invest in startups <- a bit risky (ok insane risk) but I have worked in the space for many years and invest in actual products as opposed to tech.
All in all total savings are at 97k after being completely wiped out due to illness 2 years ago. Still a very long way to go before FIRE, but since I only work 20 hours a week I am not in that big of a hurry right now. I call it happy-limbo, as I have more days off than work days.
For the coming year I really want to cut back on needless spending and save up some more of my day job pay. I know I can do it, I just need to discipline myself a little :) Hope everyone have happy holidays and a great new year!
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Bought a house, refi'd the house (long story)
Saved about $80k
Good year fo sho. :)
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No idea about expenses yet (need to wait for annual credit card reports), but took a look at net worth. At least as of Dec 10 it was $136,135 greater than last year at this time. Invested assets (household) were up $55,717 as of Dec 10. Obviously, with the last week of declines, it's dropped some. I was actually pretty surprised by these numbers.
Edited to add: just looked closer, and the net worth increase, in addition to the +$55k gains in investments, was also due to a $24k decrease in liabilities (mortgage principle, student loan payoff, aggressive car loan payments -- I've been throwing $800/mo at our $393/mo payment, which was borrowed at 0.99%, because I just want it paid off before I retire in May). The increase in investments is due to max + match contributions (incl. catch ups for me) which total @$58k, as well as appreciation in bond fund, and cash savings.
Second edit: Yikes, numbers dropped quite a bit from 11 days ago! NW and investments dropped by @$22k. investme
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Great job all :)!
For us, tbh... Not so great..... :(. Had second kid with the associated 7k of medical costs, wife didnt work for 3 months, and now only works 1-2 days a week, foundation issues (2k+), kitchen ceiling in rental fell down due to water leak into ceiling (3-5k), other random fixes and necessary upgrades (5k for flooring replacement), bought half decent mountain bikes for wife + myself (1500) for a healthy love of ours, market not so great, etc.
Not exactly a fun year financially, two ways to look at it.
I STILL saved 30K on a single income with all of the above and 2019 is going to be ridonkulous (ridonkulous: to be ridonkulous, is to be exuburantly awesomely in your stupendous stellarness).
Or
Dang... could have been 2x that easily lol ;P.
I am trying to choose the former ;).
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This year was moderately expensive for us but hopefully next year will be better! (although we will have childcare payments starting!!)
We had a new car to pay off, which was all done in summer.
Because of that, my numbers look like:
Gross Spend: £36,000
Net Spend: £31,000
Total Investing Contributions: £14,000
Average savings rate each month: 33%
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I calculated my expenses over the past 14 months as I moved last November and didn't have any relevant tracking of before that (2 years of living abroad, traveling fulltime, some months spent at parents and more messiness. Tracked my expenses throughout them all though!). Plus it was my first year of full time employment.
I multiplied the 14-month average by 12 to get to an annual number. Expenses for 2018 are gonna be around €11.5k for a single person in a MCOL city in Europe. 30% of expenses is rent, travel comes in second at 20% and groceries third at 10%.
My NW went up from €14.2k to about €35/36k (unsure about last salary and current market volatility). About €16k will be 'real savings' and I had a €7k windfall. SR will be around 57% if not accounting for the windfall.
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401k savings: $39k
Trad IRA savings: $11k
Taxable savings: maybe $5k
Savings rate: ~50%
Liquid NW on Jan 1 2018: $600k
Liquid NW today: ~$650k (EOY goal: $700k, briefly hit that a couple months ago. But then wahwah.)
-Side gigs: sold my in-laws' condo. Earned a 2% commission. Made a couple hundred selling old computers on ebay.
-Housing: Moving to a cheaper house. This will reduce my time to FIRE from 6y to 5y! Plan to sell my old house myself.
-Investment wins: Created an IPS after years of chaotic asset allocation changes. Hedged my index fund positions with protective puts in summer 2018. Found peace of mind and excitement in the Nov-Dec correction. Sold a junk bond (FGP) for a profit right before the company went into financial distress.
-Investment blunders: My play money was short volatility in January. Moved 401k to a more equity-heavy fund to get a lower ER - on October 30 - DOH! Got creamed selling covered calls last summer. Sold OHI at 28 and now it's 36.
-New experience: Assets are starting to snowball, but that also means I got to watch almost an entire year's worth of earnings from my job vaporize not once but twice this year in historically routine corrections. This is millionaire training. I will have to get used to watching six-figure fluctuations in my NW on a routine basis, which leads me to...
-Radical key lesson/insight of 2018: Stock prices don't matter. Because the dominant strategy is to buy all the shares you can as soon as you can, the price of your retirement portfolio will be a long-term average over many years, so today's price zig zags are irrelevant to our plans. What supports you in a 50 year retirement is the earnings per share times number of shares. The majority if EPS comes back to stockholders through growth, buybacks, dividends, debt reduction, innovation, and/or capital appreciation in the long term. With a sufficient number of diversified shares, one can retire with confidence no matter what the daily market price is. My FIRE number is now measured in number of shares times EPS, not shares times market price. When shares times EPS is greater than expenses, I am FI. This mentality makes the quest to FIRE a simple, linear, and inevitable process, rather than feeling like some kind of market-timing luck-based gamble. Also, this means falling prices represent an accelleration to FIRE, not a setback (my monthly contribution buys more shares). I applaud the recent 15% (so far!) correction and say FALL BABY FALL! At 20% down, my IPS says I can exit my hedges for fat profits. At 25-30% down, I *might* buy long-term calls to obtain double leverage.
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We missed our annual savings goal by $3K.
Not too bad considering we:
maxed out HSA contribution
maxed out IRAs contributions
consistently paid down our mortgage and now owe less than $10K (not really paid in advance before everyone jumps on that)
Made several thousand $$ from credit card churning
Came up with firm numbers for retirement spending a plan for the next 5(ish) years
had more than $10K of out of pocket medical expenses on top of premiums
I am still out of work and was not able to go back to work this year as planned (I am currently staying home as a full time caregiver to our son recovering from a bone marrow transplant and cancer)
I hope to start working early 2019 - if I had gotten a job this year we would have met all goals. I did use time I was not caring for my son to work on house projects that will be needed to sell our house. Part of our FIRE plan is to move.
I hope your son is recovering well.
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If this month finishes on-budget, I will have saved/invested about 88% of my income for the year.
Highlights:- Maxed 401k, and did a double contribution to my Roth to make up for 2017
- Maxed HSA
- Beat my goal for contributions to my taxable investment account by >$40k
- Cut utility bills in half for the year by switching to time-of-day billing, and adding a significant amount of insulation to the attic ($875, should pay for itself by next year)
Lowlights:- Expenses were about $2k higher than expected due to vet costs associated with an abandoned kitty that showed up on my back porch. He's worth it though!
- Very significant promotion at work is helping me achieve my financial goals, but is a huge step back in terms of overall happiness and work/life balance
Still on track to hit my lean FIRE number in February, but my overall plan of staying until 2022 has not changed. Next year I'm hoping to shave off another $1000 from my expenses, and increases my contributions to my taxable account $60k above what I did this year.
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Projected annual spending at year end: $62,400!
By far the biggest area of spending was our mortgage, which amounted to $21,000.
I'm actually surprised it's not more, honestly, as we went on two vacations this year.
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I was hit by a hurricane on Oct 10th, had about $90k in damage to the house, outbuildings and fence.
Still don't have a roof put on (temporary peal and stick layer), have water damage to ceilings in six rooms, lost all the drywall and insulation from ceiling and in our garage. Need a wall on my garage rebricked. My pickup was totaled by the ins. co, I bought it back for $700. We were without running water for 5 days, 8 days without electricty and 2-1/2 months without internet service. Cell phone service is still poor.
The structure our business was on was totally destroyed, ending our business of 18 years.
My VTSAX holdings are down $200,000 since it peaked.
Other than that, I'm working harder than I want to, getting all the damage cleaned up, rebuilding the greenhouse, building my wife a sheshed, a tree fell on her old one.
Once they install the roof, we can get the ceilings repaired and when the can find a brick that is a closer match they can rebuild the garage wall.
We were lucky, our house is livable, and we have plenty of money, there are some that had their homes destroyed and have no where to live and don't have any money.
So, ya, we are doing good. :-)
Attached are a couple pics of damage.
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Wow BT, what a mess and a terrible year. Glad you had the money to weather the financial storm.
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This has been so eye opening! I have not stopped thinking about this since I did the calculations and posted a few days ago.
I have been super frustrated all year with my family for our spending level and have several times had arguments about WANTS that turn into emergencies (I NEED it now). I am the only frugal one in our family of 6 and also the breadwinner so it makes it really hard to not go off the deep end. I ended up showing the income/expenses for 2017 and then 2018 to the SO and maybe, just maybe, it had a big enough wow factor to it that something might change (I know that my eyes are still huge and I am still pissed off about it, not sure about the other half).
I have made several, very small changes over the last few days and plan to keep chipping away small chunks at a time but I feel really defeated right now.
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We did ok according to our not-really-MMM lifestyle in a HCOL.
probably on track to spend $85K in expenses. $15K in child day care alone. $10K on treating a dog's cancer (she's doing fine, thanks).
paid off over $150K in mortgage, own our house free and clear
net worth is up almost 383K despite a down year in the stock market.
depending on how the markets close on 12/31 we should be at a 3.7% withdrawal rate based on $90K of annual expenses.
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Just ran the numbers, and we achieved five year lows across the following categories:
-Dining out (SO.Excited. We can do more here, but so happy to see us hit the five year low).
-Groceries (I'm thrilled by this, particularly as we are feeding two almost teen boys, who have growing appetites)
-Gifts (we just had fewer milestones. Previous years have included my 40th, my husband's 50th, both of my parents 60th, etc)
-Gas (bought an electric car, so this was a semi expected outcome)
-Utilities (installed solar, so expected & happy outcome)
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Really good. Our spending is about $28,200, which is a bit higher than normal since I had a bunch of dental work done and we did some fancier travel than normal. We still need to buy one package of tofu and one can of coconut milk, but that's about it. Savings rate was about 60%. Net worth increase of about $45,000, on a combined income of about $80,000, in Vancouver.
We travelled around central Mexico a bit, Europe in the summer, and we leave for Vietnam in a few days (all paid for already). We also did a lot of little trips, including organizing a mini Camp Mustache. Next year is looking even cooler, because we're hoping to do an extremely epic ten year anniversary trip in the summer.
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I already wrote a post about this. I’m not happy with myself for my spending in 2018. I understand why I did what I did, but I’m disappointed that I didn’t stay more focused. That said, I still saved money and my stache is still growing and I did everything I wanted to and coped with some things that didn’t go well. The stache brings a peace of mind that I wouldn’t trade for anything. 2019 will be better!
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I spent about $60 less per month this year than I did last year.
My expenses were about $20,000, with a savings rate of around 60%.
My goal for next year is to spend a bit less on restaurants... again. That did not happen this year. lol
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According to the bank statements:
Starting cash: $2,100
Ending cash: $23,000
Deposits: $55,700
Withdrawals: $55,500
Home equity loan "income": $20,000
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Overall, this year has been pretty great. Did a total basement remodel, and was able to rent it out on Airbnb starting in July. A full $11,000 of income is from that plus my out-of-state rental (which finally started cashflowing late this year); I'm really excited with the way it has come together.
$44k in earned income is literally my highest grossing year ever, so I'm also really happy about that.
Spending-wise, a good $22k of that spending is remodeling expenses. $14k is PITI on the house. The remaining $20k is a bit high for us, but it's also been a year of a good number of capital expenditures-- $2k for a work truck, ~$1k for tools and work stuff, some new mattresses, furniture here and there (still working on filling out the house with usefulness, as we've only been here 19 months so far). We also took a 3-week road trip from CO to WA to CA and back to CO.
Looking forward to another year of remodeling (yay....), even better income, and more rental income. Hopefully, I'll be able to pick up another house as a rental in 2020, and then be set for "passive" income covering all my living expenses by 2021.
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Love stats threads!
There's still a couple expenses before year's end (probably one more trip to the grocery store and two tanks of gas for travel for the holidays). Guesstimating those expenses it looks like my total spending should come in just under $13,000, which will be used for the sake of the following percentages. That does not include SO's expenses, she doesn't track, I pay a larger portion of the monthly bills.
The #'s
Rent: 23.08%
Groceries: 16.58%
Entertainment: 15.5%
Fun Money: 8.17%
Transportation: 7.73%
Car Insurance: 5.46%
Misc: 5.3%
Internet: 3.06%
Eating Out: 2.58%
Gifts: 2.58%
Hobby Projects: 2.55%
Water: 2.47%
House/Garden: 2.27%
Phone: 1.33%
Medical: 1.24%
Clothing: .09%
Fun Facts
- My savings rate this year is going to clock in just barely north of 73%.
- I maxed my 401k and IRA for the first time, plus putting a good chunk in taxable.
- My car cost me more in insurance than gas this year
Goals going forward
My 13k in expenses is a little less impressive than it might be if you did the calculation on my Rent. With my absolute rock bottom housing situation I know I can do better. Particularly the Entertainment category could use some work. Fun money is $100 per month I allow myself to do whatever I want with. Entertainment in many ways is simply me overspending that $100 dollars. My goal is to cut that expense in half for 2019.
Entertainment was 15.5%, or $2015. Over 50% of that was on concerts and another 25% was on records. I can do better. Music is my gazingus pin and I don't think I'll ever want to remove it from my life completely, but I can make use of cheaper local shows to cut down in that category.
I think it would be really badass to come in below 5 digits sometime. If ever I'm to do that now is the time. It would also couple together nicely with my goal to save 50k next year.
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We were budgeting to spend about $40k but ended up spending around $140k because we bought a sailboat and have been renovating and outfitting it.
I did well in stock trading though. I had predicted about $25,000 return from my trading but ended up a bit over $250,000 so far.
So all in all a pretty good year but I really hope we don't buy any more boats after this one. Bring out another thousand is so true.
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Spent $25,000 and saved/invested about $40,000 - savings rate of 60% (woooo)
Changed jobs to one way better! Fell in love! And just generally, nothing shit happened!
So yeah, I did pretty great :)
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I did well in stock trading though. I had predicted about $25,000 return from my trading but ended up a bit over $250,000 so far.
So all in all a pretty good year but I really hope we don't buy any more boats after this one. Bring out another thousand is so true.
$250k?!?
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I did well in stock trading though. I had predicted about $25,000 return from my trading but ended up a bit over $250,000 so far.
So all in all a pretty good year but I really hope we don't buy any more boats after this one. Bring out another thousand is so true.
$250k?!?
don't believe what random internet poster says.
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don't believe what random internet poster says.
This is my main trading account with YTD gains of a bit over $216,000
I also have the Robinhood race from 2500 to 250,000 thread where I have realized gain of $4000 on the inital $2500 start
I have a couple of other small accounts with some gains so the total is around $250,000
But you do you
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We improved our personal balance sheet by about 175k split between mortgage reduction and investments. So glad I reallocated extra money to the mortgage this year. It was just a feeling around March and glad I listened to it.
We also had three fantastic vacations and made memories for a life time.
I'd say 2018 was a huge success and positioned us well for 2019. Hope everyone else had a good 2018.
Yes, that's my feeling too! We paid an extra $40k to the mortgage this year and avoided a negative return on the stock market. 2018 was great and now that mortgage will be gone, it's the perfect time to start filling up those investment accounts!
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don't believe what random internet poster says.
This is my main trading account with YTD gains of a bit over $216,000
I also have the Robinhood race from 2500 to 250,000 thread where I have realized gain of $4000 on the inital $2500 start
I have a couple of other small accounts with some gains so the total is around $250,000
But you do you
oh in that case, must be legit.
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Certainly not as well as I had hoped. I'm hoping that the reason is that I was rolling in various cost savings measures throughout the year, and a lot of them won't have much effect on the 2018 numbers. I haven't delved into the month-by-month (yet). We definitely spend WAY too much money on gifts/parties (for our kids and others) and random kid stuff. Also on groceries, though I've been chipping away at that and hope to be seeing dividends shortly.
Year Total spend FIRE spending (excludes mortgage and childcare)
2014 $90k $49k
2015 $103k $59k
2016 $102k $58k
2017 $107k $61k
2018 $102k $51k
Good to see our FIRE spend down ~15% from recent years, but I'd hoped for better. Want to get that down to around $40-45k. Of course, with the wife really wanting the rest of the kitchen remodel this year, it ain't happening in 2019. Sigh.
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oh in that case, must be legit.
No, I took the time to fabricate an entire page of E-trade, making sure I had everything just right, including a large amount of commissions paid to show I had done quite a few trades during the year.
Ever hear of Occam's Razor?
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oh in that case, must be legit.
No, I took the time to fabricate an entire page of E-trade, making sure I had everything just right, including a large amount of commissions paid to show I had done quite a few trades during the year.
Ever hear of Occam's Razor?
yep. but on the interwebs, everything can be "simple".
great job on your trading prowess. send links to your investing book when it gets published.
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@Roland of Gilead, I have no reason to suspect you would be lying.
That's quite impressive! I just wanted to confirm it wasn't a typo. It would take me 5-7 years just to save that much!
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oh in that case, must be legit.
No, I took the time to fabricate an entire page of E-trade, making sure I had everything just right, including a large amount of commissions paid to show I had done quite a few trades during the year.
Ever hear of Occam's Razor?
Jackpot! Not to be a downer, but does this mean you have to report an extra 172K income and 45K capital gains on your tax return?
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We're on track to spend just under 60K, which is equivalent to our lowest spending of a handful of the past 10 years. I'm really pleased, given that we partially support a second household, had to unexpectedly purchase a new (lightly used) car after our car got t-boned, and took 3 'fun' trips (1 me only, 2 both of us; not including lots of work travel).
The downside is that we try to save just over 50K/year, and we aren't going to quite make it b/c the gov't shutdown means our last TSP contribution/match isn't happening, and also b/c some of the cash I would have used to top up the accounts this month 1) was used on unexpected down payment for car; and 2) will be used to live on with no paycheck coming due to gov't shutdown.
All in all, a very good, if not great, year.
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This is my main trading account with YTD gains of a bit over $216,000
Not to turn this in to the RoG thread, but I hope you have some of that money ready to pay the Cap Gains tax! Good job though and sounds like a good year. Should've rented the sailboat though, unless it was some 'one of a kind' thing.
2018 was a disaster of one time purchases for us - new windows, a new car - so I'm not even going to analyze! Still FI, and won't need those things for another 10 or more years.
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Jackpot! Not to be a downer, but does this mean you have to report an extra 172K income and 45K capital gains on your tax return?
Yes, that is the debbie downside. I thought when we retired I was done writing checks (was planning on getting checks and subsidies actually).
I paid $5500 in estimated tax earlier in the year to prevent any penalties (that exceeds the tax we paid last year) but I figure we will owe about 20% or so of the gains (new tax rate of 24% goes all the way to over $300,000 for married couples!).
So I have mentally set aside about 20% of 250k or $50,000 to cover taxes and figure the $5500 will cover ACA subsidy payback.
I have actually lost a little bit in the past couple of days, down about $3500 on some stocks I bought Thursday so if we continue to get a decline I could sell those for a loss before end of year to offset gains but I really like them and think they are a good value even where I bought them.
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Should've rented the sailboat though, unless it was some 'one of a kind' thing.
The sailboat is more of a engineering project. We converted it to full electric propulsion with an inboard 12kW brushless motor powered by a 20kW-hr 48V battery bank with recharge via solar, wind, regen and shore power. It needed other things though like new running rigging and rudder steering quadrant. It is fun doing something a little different (electric drive) but if I had known I could make $250k in the market, I probably would have bought a brand new boat. They are around $380,000 but the resale would be over $250,000 in five years where our electric boat that we probably will end up spending $200,000 on will have a resale of near nothing.
Alas I went cheap and bought an old used boat.
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On track to hit our budget +/- some depending on if property taxes hit this year or next (we get them sometime between 12/30 and 1/3 typically and this payment is expected to be about 6% of our budget). However, getting there was rough. We had a little over $7000 in unexpected car repairs across our 3 cars (some I was able to do my own labor on, others I was not). One car in particular got to ride a flat bed 3 times in just over a month all for totally unrelated surprise items. Despite that I did complete some home upgrades that were largely labor time (only in the hundreds of dollars for supplies) and early in the year I did complete my one higher end rifle build I'd been working on for a few years. By Fall though other hobbies and any traveling were put on a hard stop until 2019.
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Got the last paycheck of the year so have final numbers. 77% savings rate this year. Was really trying for 80%, and was above it a couple times over the year, but couldn't hold on to it. Still happy with the final rate though. And I think pretty impressive for SF Bay area. Also, up from 60% in 2017, which my my previous record. 2016 was 55%, 2015 53%. I'm still on a trend upwards with every year being better, but it's definitely going to get harder to continue that.
One of the major contributors to increased savings this year was moving onto my sailboat full time in March. Goal for 2019 is to get above 80% since I'll have the full year of reduced COL and I got a lot of the expenses related to the initial move out of the way. But I also really want to try to go to 4 days a week this year, and will happily give up on the 80% goal if I can make that happen :-)
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I still need to do the final calculations to see what my precise final figures for 2018 are (I have a little expected spending around New Year), but it looks like I earned just under £10,000 between my two different part-time work things and spent just over £5,000, which is going to give me a 47-48% savings rate while earning around 2/3 of the UK full-time minimum wage, so I'm happy.
It's true that I've saved a lot of money by living with my parents, which majorly reduced my housing costs, but since I can't afford to buy a house yet and renting at current prices in my area would mean I was spending pretty much the same on rent as everything else I spend on unless I was living with roommates anyway, I think that's fair game as a strategy. And my budget wasn't super barebones either, it contained a bunch of long distance train travel to meet up with my boyfriend, two holidays, and probably like £100 in library fines, amongst other things. So if I did need to take on a larger portion of bills and housing costs, there's definitely things I could still cut.
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NW about flat for the year. Down about $300k from intra-year peak. No worries. Still on course.
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Not counting the money I've spent on supplies and materials for a fledgling crafting sideline (that I've made a whopping $700 of profit off of so far, HA!) I've spent just a hair over 17.5k this year-- my lowest year yet. Roommates, cooking at home, and not doing my usual international travel have made this possible, but I also got slapped with some unexpected big expenses (new mattress, replacement of expensive electronics) so I think it evens out a bit. Not sure if I'll be able to manage the same numbers next year (planning on traveling internationally again to visit aging family members, at the very least), but hopefully by then my business will be rolling along and bringing in a little more money.
Still, now that I know I can, and have done it, and still managed to live a very joyous and satisfying year full of laughter, fun, and social outings, the occasional splurge and a lot... lot of fancy beers, probably too many fancy beers.
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oh in that case, must be legit.
No, I took the time to fabricate an entire page of E-trade, making sure I had everything just right, including a large amount of commissions paid to show I had done quite a few trades during the year.
Ever hear of Occam's Razor?
yep. but on the interwebs, everything can be "simple".
great job on your trading prowess. send links to your investing book when it gets published.
Oh, come on, @wannabe-stache! @Roland of Gilead has been around since 2012. He's a valued member of this community, not some latecomer who just created an account to try to sell you something or generate blog traffic. He is sharing his real life, real time experience, the same way @sammybiker is. They are actually setting and achieving audacious goals and letting the rest of us watch while they do awesome things. Your comments seem unnecessarily dick-ish. Please stop.
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Total spending for 2018: $16,876.58, which is $1,508.38 less than 2017. Sweet. That was as low as it's gonna get though, as inflation from apt rent, health insurance, etc will overtake any marginal cost cuts I could or would care to make at this point.
Total income was $96,161.19, and total saved was $67,984.44, for a gross savings rate of 70.7%, and an after tax savings rate of 80.1%. I did not include the employer paid portion of my health insurance in any of the above numbers.
Happy New Year's to all!
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I thought 2018 was going to be an epically awful year due to some high expenses. The numbers show it was not great but not quite as bad as I feared. Assuming mortgage paydown counts as saving, then in part due to the benefits of a generous gift we saved 40% of our income. If the gift is excluded, we saved 30%. If mortgage paydown can't count as saving, and the gift is excluded, it was 20%. Net worth as a whole was down due to investment losses but we had a great run for many years before that so I can't complain.
I expect in 2019 we will be able to slash a lot in unusual / one-time expenses, but we also have some planned home renovations (money already earmarked in a savings account). So I expect 2019 numbers will be similar, with a lower daily burn rate and a big slug of home renovation spending evening each other. out Then, 2020 numbers should be a lot better when the home renovations are done.
In about 3-5 years I hope to leave my government job for a more profitable one and my wife will start to work again once all three kids are in school. If we can keep lowering expenses during that process, we should hopefully be able to start blowing things out of the water then.
My primary goals in 2019 are health / fitness as #1, career as #2 and finances as #3. With three little kids in an expensive area, we're playing the long game rather than racing towards FIRE.
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Our net worth went from about $860K in January 2018 to... about $860K in December 2018. Considering that a significant portion of our net worth in January 2018 was due to a small bitcoin purchase I made years ago ballooning to an absurd value, I'm pleased we were able to avoid a drop this year. We spent about $120K and saved about $120K after taxes. I'm quite pleased with the approx. 50% after-tax savings rate. That's good for us.
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Our spending was ~$68k. We unexpectedly had to out our son in a private therapeutic school for which we paid 10k for during 2018. That brings us down to $58k which is still a bit higher than I would like. $15k was mortgage payments, but as I expect to have those 29 more years, I don't plan to discount those. I think it's time to check the lifestyle inflation!
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Yep, now that the year is done it turned out pretty well - total spending of $28,229, 64% savings rate. Net worth increase of about 40K, on a net income about 77K.
And Vietnam is really cool so far.
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As a SINK, I have some basic dependent costs that are frankly missing and it allows greater flexibility to structure life more to my own personal liking, with little regard to the preferences of others, rules or other extreme actions generally required or at least taken to meet targeted goals.
Despite purchasing a simply phenomenal Model S over a year ago now, savings rates were still in the 70% range with all tax advantaged space fully maxed both post and pre as permitted by tax law or employment policy. Brokerage funding has continued and balances in the corresponding buckets is still on track to be substantially optimized for future tax avoidance scenarios.
Quite a bit of adventuring has been enjoyed in 2018 and 2019 is starting off well in that regard. Income increased at a rate above expectation and despite a gloomy overall market annual return.
It’s been a good year with more attention focused on what I want things to look like, instead of compulsive obsession with the cost of a crown of broccoli. This for me is healthy growth and balance.
It is also nice to read the high savings rates reported here. There is quite a bit of prosperity being enjoyed and much to be grateful for. Onward and upward...
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We spent significantly more money on travel this year as compared to previous years and I thought we would end a bit over preferred budget. But, we had significant cost savings in other areas of our life keeping 2018 spending about where we want it to be. We spent less on alcohol, utilities, gas, eating out, clothes, and we were able to reduce our property tax this year (we live in a state with high property tax.) We converted spending that yields low value to spending on experiences and higher value.
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We ended up hitting $75k increase in net worth. (+14%)
Combined Spending - $37,250
Combined Income - $128,000
Combined Net Worth - $515,100
Combined 2018 Savings Rate - 71%
Years of Combined Expenses - 13.8X
Current WR% - 7.23%
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I did okay, but not great. Paid off $10,000 in addition to the regular $350 monthly payments on my student loans, which are my only extant debt. Will have paid off another extra $10,000 in a couple weeks.
Spent more than usual on my hobby, but only bought those things with carefully placed discounts and coupons, and only bought things that would be easy to resell if I needed/wanted to, to recoup that money.
But, I'm really blowing it with food and beer. I've fallen into the very lazy habit of ordering delivery when I'm too "tired" to cook at least once a week, and have been mostly mostly eating lunches out at work. I actually love to cook, but have developed some impractical standards--if I can't spend a couple hours making a great meal, I don't want to do it at all. It's stupid and I need to cut the shit. There are plenty of fast and simple meals I could be making, and I have the tools and skills to do it. I really need to punch my own face this year to tackle this area of wasteful spending.
edit: forgot to mention I got my 401k setup at 10% this year, so put that in the Good Boy column!
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Not a very Mustachian year for us in terms of living expenses, but our total stash has gone up dramatically.
At the end of 2017 I stopped working full time at my old job, and now only do a shift every couple of weeks. That happened because I took a huge leap and bought a mixed use residential and commercial building that needed a lot of work. In balance, my spouse got a promotion at her work and almost replaced half of my reduced income.
So we made a conscious choice to have a lower income, and I think I only 'earned' about $10k this year. I didn't save much of that, though we did put a fair bit away into my wife's tax sheltered account. On the other hand, I spent the whole year upgrading the building, with the payoff being a final sign off by the building inspector on Dec 27th.
Value of bldg when I bought it - $650k
Expenses to upgrade it - $140k
Value of bldg now it is completed - $1.2M
So despite a low income/low savings year, I 'made' $400k.
I now find myself in the position of having to make a choice between selling the building and pocketing the after tax profits, or filling up the rental units and paying it down over time. Net profit on rents would be about $7k/month after mortgage, utilities and long-term maintenance costs (it will need a roof in a few years).
Technically that puts me into a partial FIRE position, but I expect to work at something while I manage the building, and there is still a bit of work to be done.
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The MMM lifestyle is working very nicely for my family.
Our spending for 2018 came in at $51,500. Not bad considering we did a small home renovation ($6,000) and added costs of a newborn and daycare. Total investments and regular scheduled principal payments totaled $86,000 which is a 70% savings rate for our gross income.
We are aiming for less than $50,000 in spending for 2019 to keep the lifestyle inflation in check and hope to save as close to $100,000 as possible.
We have 19% of our FI money so far. Several more years to go but things are looking very promising.
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I did okay, but not great. Paid off $10,000 in addition to the regular $350 monthly payments on my student loans, which are my only extant debt. Will have paid off another extra $10,000 in a couple weeks.
Spent more than usual on my hobby, but only bought those things with carefully placed discounts and coupons, and only bought things that would be easy to resell if I needed/wanted to, to recoup that money.
But, I'm really blowing it with food and beer. I've fallen into the very lazy habit of ordering delivery when I'm too "tired" to cook at least once a week, and have been mostly mostly eating lunches out at work. I actually love to cook, but have developed some impractical standards--if I can't spend a couple hours making a great meal, I don't want to do it at all. It's stupid and I need to cut the shit. There are plenty of fast and simple meals I could be making, and I have the tools and skills to do it. I really need to punch my own face this year to tackle this area of wasteful spending.
edit: forgot to mention I got my 401k setup at 10% this year, so put that in the Good Boy column!
Just wanted to update that I put my last year's of expenses in order with my Mint profile and while I'm 100% right about the takeout and beer (I am afraid to tell you even under anonymity what I spent on Seamless alone last year), I otherwise did exceptionally--2018 was the most financially responsible year of my life.. Can't wait to outdo myself in 2019.
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Wow, some really impressive saving rates of over 70% here!
@Cool Friend I ordered seamless exactly once last year and maybe another time that my husband did when I was on a work trip. That shit is expensive, I almost died seeing the total. But it's also amazing that someone will bring restaurant food to your house. Still, we know you can do better and wish you luck improving in 2019 :) At least you know what the problem is.
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I'm new to the MMM site, but 2018 was a great year for us: we officially crossed the $1M net worth line! It doesn't feel like nearly as big of a deal as I though it would though. I suspect it will feel bigger when our net worth excluding the house reaches the $1M mark.
Up to this point in life, after we became debt free, we just tried to stick to a budget and put money away. For 2019, I'm going to be more intentional about tracking our progress. Based on our budget, our savings rate is over 70%. That could turn out to be slightly higher or lower - I made some changes to my W-4 and will need to update my spreadsheets once I have a more accurate estimate of take-home pay for the year.
Our spending budget for the year is ~$24k (excludes health insurance), plus we have a $6k allowance for vacations/fun that I will be surprised if we even spend half of, so in total $30k excluding health insurance.
I love reading everyone's stats - it's great to see so many people spending less and saving a lot more!