Background info: We are a family of 4 with my H working, me at home with the kids, and a 4 and 6 year old. My H has a health issue, my 6 year old has special needs, and I have a cancer gene with a 100% guarantee of cancer by age 50. Thus the title: just doing all the appropriate annual check-ups and screening procedures puts us at about about 8K of medical costs a year. We are on the best plan that my H's employer offers balancing premium prices and what is covered (it is an HSA and we fully fund the HSA every year for the tax advantage). I am 31, H is 38.
That costs are pretty fixed, no matter how much we bike or how much kale we eat ;)
Assets:
Home could reasonably sell for 250-260K
Roth IRA's and 401K's I need to add up but we are around 350K
Own 3 cars outright: 2 2003 Civics that are our daily vehicles, each with about 100K miles. One 2004 Sienna with 175K miles. Notes about the cars are below.
About 20K in bank (e-fund).
Liabilities:
Owe about 200K on the house. Under 4% interest rate.
Monthly budget:
Income after life insurance, health insurance premiums, HSA deductions, 12% to 401K, etc: 5200
Expenses:
Kids (clothing, activities, babysitters, etc): 200
Daughter's preschool (cheapest around by far): 185
Groceries: 650 (we eat mostly organic and as much local food as possible. I know we could switch to conventional but I am not convinced our situation is bad enough to warrant that. This is both an ethical priority and a health priority for us).
Eating out: 100
YMCA: 62 (allows kids swim lessons. Lesson costs are under the Kids category. We do use it. We will drop it once the kids are through lessons).
Adults clothing: 40 (this is mostly shoes and replacement of my H's work clothes. We buy virtually no casual clothing).
Car gas: 150
Car insurance: 60
Car repairs: in 2013 we had 2 timing belts to replace, but other than that we have never had anything besides oil changes. I don't have a good budget number for this.
Roth IRA: 416
Medical costs avg 650
Mortgage including taxes and HOI: 1519
Electric 98
Garbage 21
Natural Gas 100 (this number is for winter, it is about half that in summer)
Water 50
House phone and internet 68 (My H feels strongly about keeping the house phone for emergencies due to his health condition and bc we get poor cell service.)
Cell phones: 100 (2 smart phones on family plan with my parents. Contract is up in Nov and we will price out pay as you go options then).
Misc. House maintenance: 100
Total outflow= 4529
The difference in income and expenses is currently invested in my H's employee stock purchase plan. He has a chunk that he can sell whenever. Probably about 5K worth (the plan just started 6 months ago). We get a 15% discount on the stock. Plan is to sell whenever the stock price looks good and not invest in the company long term (want to diversify). The plan for that money is medium term savings- car repairs, house repairs, costs to move to a new house (transaction costs, we will move ourselves), and if we don't need it to put it in savings of some kind (Roth, 529, idk. Haven't gotten that far yet).
Goals:
-Buy a different house. Probably not any more expensive mortgage, but different location, and likely an older house in need of work, so we would have renovation costs. We are considering buying a smaller house with lower cost as well. Likely just depends on what comes along as there is low supply here. We aren't actively pursuing this, just keeping an eye on things so if we see the perfect thing we can jump on it.
-Me return to work whenever the right job comes along and it makes sense with respect to childcare costs.
-Retire someday. Due to our high medical costs that seem likely to only go up as we age, retiring on time and healthy is good enough!
Story on the cars: H and I have had the 2 civics forever. Last month we were gifted the van by a close family friend. We drive the Civics on a regular basis, and only use the van if we need it for yard/garden work or carpooling kids. The plan is in a few years we will sell one civic and the van, and buy something that is larger than the Civic but more fuel efficient than the van. Or maybe we will find that we don't use the van enough to need a larger car at all. The reasoning for this plan is that the van could die soon given its mileage, and we don't plan to sink a ton of money into fixing it. It would very much hurt our friends' feelings if we turned around and sold the van immediately, thus waiting a few years.
In terms of driving in general, we live in a rural area about 30 minutes from a larger city. My H works off a rural highway and does not feel safe biking to work (he formerly biked to work when we lived in a city so he isn't turning his nose up at it for no reason). He has maybe a 5 mile commute with no traffic so we expect his Civic to last until we eventually give it to our teenagers in 10 years or so. I stay at home and drive my kids to activities, and drive into the 30 mile away city maybe 2-3 times a month for Dr's appointments, therapy for my son, Costco trips, etc. I try to combine trips. Due to the ages of the kids and my sons physical delays we are not very successful at biking places. I hope that as the kids get older we can consider being a one car family, as they will hopefully be able to bike further, and I will be able to run DH to work easily since they will be able to be left at home. We do own a bike trailer but they weigh a combined 85 lbs and I can't physically bike them the distances we need to go to get to school, etc. We can bike more on the weekends when H and I can each tow one kid.