It seems the common factor for people actually living below the 2k/month limit is controlled housing costs, especially through shared living arrangements.
It looks like 4 of 12 responses mentioned roommates or tenants.It seems the common factor for people actually living below the 2k/month limit is controlled housing costs, especially through shared living arrangements.yes and no. If you own a place or rent a place with low enough mortgage or rent I think it's very doable alone - even easier as with an SO. Getting roommates or sharing allows you to live in a nicer or bigger place or better area then you might be able to if living alone for the same amount. As a single person (or even if SO moved in) I don't need a nice 2/2 house with a 2 car garage and a fenced yard. I could have gotten a one bedroom or studio apt for around $800/month maybe less and lived alone well under $2k/month. However with a roommate or SO I not only pay less but have a nicer place with privacy and a yard for the pup.
Of course if I wanted to live in a HCOL area where rents for a one bedroom are near $2k/month then its impossible unless you share.
Same with the paid off mortgage. Once I paid my house off (and paid off the exDH for his share of the house) and built up my stash a bit I got rid of the roommates and lived alone in a HCOL area. It was cheaper for me then doing the shared rental because my prop taxes and other housing expensesbwete so low. However some people with paid off houses still have huge tax bills or maintenance costs so they might be better off renting. Or sharing. Or both.
2015 Financial Summary, Part I
Spending
Rent: $15,600
Food: $1,895 ($158 monthly average)
Health insurance (pretax): $785 ($450 if you consider taxes avoided)
Utilities: $547
Internet: $549
Transit (Metrocard, almost all pretax): $1,413 ($918 if you consider taxes avoided)
Transit (Other): $466
Travel: $668
Health/home supplies: $249
Entertainment: $234
Manufactured Spend: $22
Gifts: $18
Total Spending in 2015: $22,446 ($1,870/mo)
Total Spending with Tax Savings Factored In: $21,616 ($1,801/mo)
It looks like 4 of 12 responses mentioned roommates or tenants.
5 of 12 mention having a SO
3 of 12 seemed to be single, and one of those was over 2k/person
2 mentioned paid off mortgages
They are not exclusive, and I think I counted some of them wrong.
Costs for the shared-living-type people seem to be lower than the (few) single ones. Deliberate lowering of housing costs seemed to me like the stand-out trait of people with low monthly expenses on this thread. The sample size is small, but the rate of shared housing looks to be higher than what I guess is the US/Ca average.
Well I stated in mine that my long term costs would change once I lived with my partner, but the budget I posted was my current spending. I do expect that my monthly expenses will be lower with a partner, but perhaps higher again once we have kids, and most likely different if we (probably) buy a property, although I hope to house hack so not necessarily more. It would be impossible for me to predict my lifetime costs right now, but I'm perfectly comfortable spending under 2k a month and have done so for my entire adult life. The keys for me are not spending too much on rent, even though I do have a one bedroom apartment to myself in a good location (close to work, hobbies, groceries, public transport). And not owning a car, because I chose to live in a place where I didn't need one. If I can get away with never owning a car I will, although what might change that is my partner's desire to have one so we can get out of the city, and if we have kids it might become a necessity (although I love the idea of baby trailers). I didn't include health care costs because I have insurance at work but it costs $117 a month and doesn't put me over 2k, but I haven't investigated that cost without work since that's 20 years out and I don't think current research would useful in any way. And plus, public health care ftw!It looks like 4 of 12 responses mentioned roommates or tenants.
5 of 12 mention having a SO
3 of 12 seemed to be single, and one of those was over 2k/person
2 mentioned paid off mortgages
They are not exclusive, and I think I counted some of them wrong.
Costs for the shared-living-type people seem to be lower than the (few) single ones. Deliberate lowering of housing costs seemed to me like the stand-out trait of people with low monthly expenses on this thread. The sample size is small, but the rate of shared housing looks to be higher than what I guess is the US/Ca average.
I was attempting to make the point that I believe many of these budgets are not true representations of long term costs. And that people might be fooling themselves if they are using this budget as a guideline for their retirement spending. Then again, I could be mistaken, projecting, or overly conservative.
I could be wrong, if it's true that people's "misc" and "spending" categories really do include the amortized cost of their vehicle / next vehicle, expected maintenance costs, or things like home repair (did you amortize your 20-year roof in there at $20k/20years? I only saw one other person include this item in their budget). But I doubt most posters are doing this especially if not already FI.
I agree that housing costs seem like the most likely way to keep your budget low. I have done the roommate thing for years and it's easy to get half the cost of the cheapest cheap-ass apartment I could possibly find in my city - being able to split monopolized utility costs (80/mo internet WTF) is a big saver in addition to just less rent. If you can go without a vehicle that's likely the 2nd biggest thing but in most cases where you can go without a vehicle, housing costs are higher.
I was attempting to make the point that I believe many of these budgets are not true representations of long term costs. And that people might be fooling themselves if they are using this budget as a guideline for their retirement spending. Then again, I could be mistaken, projecting, or overly conservative.
I was attempting to make the point that I believe many of these budgets are not true representations of long term costs. And that people might be fooling themselves if they are using this budget as a guideline for their retirement spending. Then again, I could be mistaken, projecting, or overly conservative.
The question was about current expenses ("are you living..") so that's what people answered to. I think quite a few might have different nest-egg numbers that do not necessarily align with current expenses.
Especially for the young (single, childless) folks amongst us it's easier to have low spending, but it's also hard to predict what retirement spending will look like as there's no way of factoring in expected future expenses of a potential partner/kids. I'm not planning to live in a 130 sqft student room forever, but it's hard to say with how much and into what direction housing costs will change as I can't predict where I'll live in a few years and with whom.
With current expenses I could save up a nest egg of 300k and resign, but I consider it unlikely that my expenses will never go up unless I'd move back to a LCOL country. Hence I have no projected FIRE date or number (but I do have goals in the sense of "get to 30k by the end of the year").
Still it can be extremely helpful and inspirational to see other's budget and find areas of improvement, and to me it's even just interesting to see how people prioritize their spending areas.
I could be wrong, if it's true that people's "misc" and "spending" categories really do include the amortized cost of their vehicle / next vehicle, expected maintenance costs, or things like home repair (did you amortize your 20-year roof in there at $20k/20years? I only saw one other person include this item in their budget). But I doubt most posters are doing this especially if not already FI.
I know for me, that's what my savings are for. Since I listed only my "living on" expenses, I didn't include my saving rate, or funds already saved, etc. (Or taxes, which I categorize as an expense in my annual summary.)
Yes, my annual spending could potentially double if I needed to replace my roof. It'll all average out in the end. And who knows what my next vehicle will cost, or how much I'll spend on maintenance - circumstances will dictate that when the need arises ... no need to add made-up numbers before they become actual expenses.
It seems the common factor for people actually living below the 2k/month limit is controlled housing costs, especially through shared living arrangements.
Well, budgets are a very personal thing so I understand that everyone has different use cases which may result in important information for one person being missing from another's budget, and vice versa. Something to be aware of when comparing online.
I, for one, use my budget to predict my required FI 'stache so it is very important to have an accurate picture of expected long term average costs. I also use it to inform my spending behavior, so I do NOT count taxes as an expense (for this purpose) since I do not have control over them and expect them to change drastically (in a predictable way) during FI. So including my current taxes in my budget would not be very useful information for informing my behavior NOR for calculating my required 'stache size. Of course, this may or may not be the case for someone else!
Using cars as an example - I have taken my past experience with near-end-of-life maintenance expenses and prepared to spend that average amount, as long as I own a car. I know that the type of car I drive now is the type of car I'll own in the future so I can estimate how much it will cost to replace. So I can make an entirely reasonable guess and add it to my monthly expenses so that I have a more accurate picture of my actual spending, and will be more prepared when irregular expenses arise. Finance is a life-long optimization problem and not only concerned with the current month or the current year.
To me, making claims about having a certain expense level is useless if it doesn't include this information - like saying "I spent $10 on lunch out but that was 3 hours ago, right NOW I'm spending $0 on lunch! See how frugal I am?" You can see how ludicrous this statement is. If you spent $10k on a car and kept it for 5 years, then it cost you $2k/year to own, and that's part of your expenses. Whether you quantify that in your budget as [$10k, $0, $0, $0, $0] or [$2k, $2k, $2k, $2k, $2k] doesn't matter, but when you're analyzing your finances or telling other people about them you can't just pick one of the $0 years without context and say it's accurate.
I'm not saying its impossible to live on less than $2k or that you all are liars. I'm just suggesting we should be honest and more ready to consider hidden and irregular parts of expenses
For example I only saw one person with kids and their expenses were low because they had a paid off house with fairly low prop taxes. So maybe being a DINK or SINK is the more common thing between us under $2kers and not just housing.Good point about kids. I didn't notice that because I didn't look for it, like the 500-lb gorilla on the basket ball team. Of course, many respondents used a per-capita cost, which would make households with kids relatively very cheap.
Speaking for myself, I made no attempt to account for employer-covered insurance in the cost which would definitely be an expense if we had to look after ourselves. The roof is in the 200/mo house maintenance. That is just an estimate, all our expenses are much much more lumpy than the summary made them seem, and like another poster I don't make a budget to meet but instead see where our money went after the fact. However the house maintenance is based on a conservative 0.2% of purchase cost per month. And I forgot about the car depreciation completely because it never shows up in practice and will be a cash-flow item. That should add $100/mo, putting us at $2K exactly.It looks like 4 of 12 responses mentioned roommates or tenants.
5 of 12 mention having a SO
3 of 12 seemed to be single, and one of those was over 2k/person
2 mentioned paid off mortgages
They are not exclusive, and I think I counted some of them wrong.
Costs for the shared-living-type people seem to be lower than the (few) single ones. Deliberate lowering of housing costs seemed to me like the stand-out trait of people with low monthly expenses on this thread. The sample size is small, but the rate of shared housing looks to be higher than what I guess is the US/Ca average.
I was attempting to make the point that I believe many of these budgets are not true representations of long term costs. And that people might be fooling themselves if they are using this budget as a guideline for their retirement spending. Then again, I could be mistaken, projecting, or overly conservative.
I could be wrong, if it's true that people's "misc" and "spending" categories really do include the amortized cost of their vehicle / next vehicle, expected maintenance costs, or things like home repair (did you amortize your 20-year roof in there at $20k/20years? I only saw one other person include this item in their budget). But I doubt most posters are doing this especially if not already FI.
I agree that housing costs seem like the most likely way to keep your budget low. I have done the roommate thing for years and it's easy to get half the cost of the cheapest cheap-ass apartment I could possibly find in my city - being able to split monopolized utility costs (80/mo internet WTF) is a big saver in addition to just less rent. If you can go without a vehicle that's likely the 2nd biggest thing but in most cases where you can go without a vehicle, housing costs are higher.
TV licence £12 - a legal requirement in the UK
25, single, HCOL northern Canada. No car, no alcholol almost no dining out.If you swich to Crave TV ($80/year) from netflix it's cheaper (Basic Netflix is $108).
Current rent is 350 for a shared apartment with a coworker provided by work, and will be increasing to about 1000 with utilities in the fall for a 400ft2 one bed. Moving for a healthier environment disentangled from employment status and space to make art which will hopefully somewhat offset rent by having more stuff to sell and an additional tax credit.
300 food
35 phone, Netflix, website hosting
200 travel (happy for this to be less but family is on the other side of the country)
400-500 on everything else. Lots of art supplies, life drawing, art classes, running/hiking stuff, clothes, medical, the occasional movie, eating out about1-2x a month, gifts, plants, books etc.
Total with current rent~ 1350
Total with new rent ~2000
For a normal American family of five, $2k/mo per person is pretty damn luxurious. That's $120k/yr!
My family of five is not very mustachian and even we only spend approximately half that much (depending on how you count mortgage costs).
are you being deliberately obtuse?
Its a fair point. My $2500 is total for everyone since I'm too lazy to divide it out (its not an equal split, I eat the most and use the most utilities and have the master bedroom - shared with the wife). Without kids it would be lower, likely closer to $2000/month (for the two of us). Without her, I'd spend $1200-1500, clearly its not scalar.are you being deliberately obtuse?
Often, but not in this case.
Children are real people. They have real expenses, which have to be paid by someone. They need bedrooms and fridge space like anyone else.
The efficiencies of family life come from putting five people under one roof. They are exactly analogous to having four roommates, except in this case they are roommates who don't have jobs.
I’d love to see the budgets of anyone really, especially people spending under 2 grand and living comfortable and traveling etc. Something simple not like a case study.
Here's a partial for me:
$300 Property tax
$200 Food expenses
$110 Electric bill
$85 Natural gas
$71 Homeowner's insurance
$60 Health insurance premium (net out of pocket)
$40 Internet
$36 Water/Garbage Bill
$2 Online streaming or subscription services
$1 Cell phone
$0 Cable TV bill
$0 Newspaper / Magazines
>$5500 Left over for misc. discretionary / mostly saving
TV licence £12 - a legal requirement in the UK
Not if you don't have a TV, or if you don't connect your TV to an aerial. I used to have a TV for my PS2, but did not pay TV license because it was never hooked up for TV.
TV licence £12 - a legal requirement in the UK
Not if you don't have a TV, or if you don't connect your TV to an aerial. I used to have a TV for my PS2, but did not pay TV license because it was never hooked up for TV.
Actually, it doesn't need to be a TV.
Any broadcast (online included) on "any device, including a TV, desktop computer, laptop, mobile phone, tablet, games console, digital box or DVD/VHS recorder."
They kinda got ya every which way.
It seems the common factor for people actually living below the 2k/month limit is controlled housing costs, especially through shared living arrangements.
It looks like 4 of 12 responses mentioned roommates or tenants......
5 of 12 mention having a SO
3 of 12 seemed to be single, and one of those was over 2k/person
2 mentioned paid off mortgages
They are not exclusive, and I think I counted some of them wrong.
Costs for the shared-living-type people seem to be lower than the (few) single ones. Deliberate lowering of housing costs seemed to me like the stand-out trait of people with low monthly expenses on this thread. The sample size is small, but the rate of shared housing looks to be higher than what I guess is the US/Ca average.
I could be wrong, if it's true that people's "misc" and "spending" categories really do include the amortized cost of their vehicle / next vehicle, expected maintenance costs, or things like home repair (did you amortize your 20-year roof in there at $20k/20years? I only saw one other person include this item in their budget). But I doubt most posters are doing this especially if not already FI.
.....
OP Please clarify... is that 2k/month per person or per household?
I used total household because spending $10,000 per month would be ridiculous (fam of 5).
I used total household because spending $10,000 per month would be ridiculous (fam of 5).
How is it ridiculous?
That statement is not offensive, it's THE POINT OF THE ENTIRE BLOG.