Author Topic: How much is your budget for misc expenses?  (Read 4378 times)

drpassiveincome

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How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« on: September 25, 2017, 09:41:21 AM »
Right now I have:
Rent
Health insurance
groceries
Utilities
Cell phone
Subway pass

Entertainment is one that I will calculate on its own. Will be an art tbqh.

What about misc expenses though? I've lived with my parents for a bit so I have no idea how much these would be.

Retire-Canada

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #1 on: September 25, 2017, 09:55:19 AM »
Define what you want to consider miscellaneous?

drpassiveincome

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #2 on: September 25, 2017, 09:59:16 AM »
Well its dictionary definition of misc - anything not in the prior categories

ixtap

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #3 on: September 25, 2017, 10:00:42 AM »
Clothes?
Personal (hygiene, haircuts, etc.)?
Travel/ vacations/ social?

Your budget should include annual expenses, not just the things you spent on last month.


When I budgeted, I counted pretty much all non essentials as "mental health". Mostly, this was dancing and coffee shops, which were my two main social outlets.

Now, we feel that an occasional check in is sufficient. If we were to be shocked during a check in, we can go through our records, but we haven't needed to in the last two years. When we change lifestyles, we will once again track closely until we are sure we made the transition properly.


Retire-Canada

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #4 on: September 25, 2017, 10:08:25 AM »
Well its dictionary definition of misc - anything not in the prior categories

Then I would continue to breakdown the categories further since there at a glance many obvious items missing you'd need to budget for to lead a normal life. That process will narrow down the misc category considerably.

VoteCthulu

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #5 on: September 25, 2017, 10:23:27 AM »
I use Mint to track my expenses, and any time I have an unbudgeted expense I create a budget for it.

The closest thing I have to a misc category is my budget for less than once per year expenses (things like replacing appliances, the roof, cars, etc.) I currently have $2000/year budgeted for that.

Zikoris

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #6 on: September 25, 2017, 10:31:02 AM »
Our spending for two people after axing the categories you listed was $13,611 for 2016.

That did include $8,882 of travel though. So $4,729 for two people for normal things, or around $200/person/month. That includes entertainment, restaurants, personal care, fitness, clothes/shoes, and every type of shopping (video games, gifts, kitchen stuff, replacing a dead computer, and various household things like closet organizers or whatever).

BTDretire

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #7 on: September 25, 2017, 10:35:44 AM »
We never had a budget, just learned not to spend.

secondcor521

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #8 on: September 25, 2017, 10:36:14 AM »
I don't budget, but I spent $4 per month on actual miscellaneous in the last six months.

Here are my categories and subcategories, maybe reviewing them will help identify ones you've missed:

College - Fees, Room, Board, Tuition, Transportation, Misc
Kids - Child support, Recreation, Gifts, Misc
Food - Eating out, Groceries
Utilities - Cell phone, Electric, Gas, Garbage, Internet, Sewer, Water
Insurance - Auto, Medical
Recreation - Bike, Bridge, Electronics, Golf, Movies, Vacation
Auto - Fuel, Maintenance, Repair, Misc
Medical - Doctor, Dentist, Medicine
House - Household, Landscaping, Maintenance, Repair
Pets
Clothing
Christmas

andy85

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #9 on: September 25, 2017, 10:45:21 AM »
i'm pegging it at roughly $2500/year.

My misc. includes the following:
haircuts
clothes shopping
cell phone
gambling
health supplements
medical costs (prescriptions, cold medicine, etc)
gifts
tax prep service

ETA: attached my spending template if you care to see....i had it handy since i just put it in another thread too. may give you some ideas on stuff you may be overlooking. everybody allocates line items differently, so do what works for you.
« Last Edit: September 25, 2017, 10:49:46 AM by andy85 »

boarder42

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #10 on: September 25, 2017, 11:35:40 AM »
i dont budget... i think thats the point everyone here should try to reach.  MMM had a post about it recently.  buy what you want when you want  just change what you want and you no longer have to have some strict set of money buckets for which to spend from.  personally i think money buckets actually leads people to spend more in some instances.  so now you have a budget category thats for anything so when do you know you've met the categorical requirements and have enough of it since its an abstract category. 

slappy

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #11 on: September 25, 2017, 11:40:34 AM »
i'm pegging it at roughly $2500/year.

My misc. includes the following:
haircuts
clothes shopping
cell phone
gambling
health supplements
medical costs (prescriptions, cold medicine, etc)
gifts
tax prep service

ETA: attached my spending template if you care to see....i had it handy since i just put it in another thread too. may give you some ideas on stuff you may be overlooking. everybody allocates line items differently, so do what works for you.

I'm not OP, but I snagged that. Thank you!

Bumperpuff

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #12 on: September 25, 2017, 01:40:55 PM »
I budget $750 for all variable expenses that I make daily decisions about  including food, travel, recreation, entertainment, gifts/donations, and the like. I keep an ongoing tally of how much I have left for the month and how much I'm over/under for a year. Things associated with personal transportation (bike and car), housing, phone, insurance, and the like I track, but don't have a defined budget for (they typically run about $1000/month).

My goal is to be as much below $750/month as possible, with a total living expense below $20k/year.

MrsPB

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #13 on: September 25, 2017, 05:34:25 PM »
I have many categories in my budget. My misc category includes:
-Tax prep fees
-Postage (that is not associated with gifts-that goes in gift category)
-Small household appliances like my Instant pot, or kitchen implements
-cellphone case/replacement screen
-annual YNAB fee
-birthday party supplies for kids parties
-dry cleaning

 


jlcnuke

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #14 on: September 25, 2017, 05:39:58 PM »
Well, the way I do my budget I start with my income. Then I put the "mandatory costs" (bills, taxes, food, insurance, etc) into the budget. Then I allocate how much I want to save/invest. The remainder is my "misc" spending that I'll spend if I feel like it on whatever I feel like (including putting more money away if I don't spend all of the remainder or decide I want to for some reason).

If you're trying to get an idea of "categories" for your budget, here's the spreadsheet I use. The file isn't locked or anything so feel free to updated the categories to be 'yours' if you have other/different spending. One thing I like about it is the ability to compare "planned" vs actual spending so you can fine-tune your budget over time by putting in your real spending so you know where your money is going both "in your plan" and "in reality" as long as you can track your spending fairly accurately. http://www.gceenterprises.com/jlcnuke/blank_budget.xls

joonifloofeefloo

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #15 on: September 25, 2017, 05:43:17 PM »
Zero.

I found it made a huge difference to put everything in a category. I actually have relatively few, but a home for each outlay.

EmFrugal

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #16 on: September 25, 2017, 06:58:52 PM »
We also don't have a miscellaneous budget. Instead we have divided ours into fixed expenditures like rent/mortgage, home insurance, (things we know will come out every month at the same cost) and variable expenditures. The variables are things like groceries, gas, toiletries, haircuts, school supplies, etc. I took our income after taxes, health insurance and 401K contributions and pulled out all of the fixed stuff. Then I set a concrete weekly spend cap for our variable expenditures. That way I know what number we cannot exceed each week in order to reach our savings goal. I love this method because it allows us to spend in ways that bring value to our lives. I do have to be diligent about updating what I spend each day, which really just turns in to a day of groceries, a day of gas, a day of another random expense, but it works really well for us. I have one number to keep track of for the week instead of a ton of categories. All I have to do is make sure we don't exceed that weekly number. And so far, we're doing great!

2Birds1Stone

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Re: How much is your budget for misc expenses?
« Reply #17 on: September 26, 2017, 06:39:20 AM »
$2,500/yr