SillySarah Case Study: I am 27, husband is 28, no kids. This is my first MMM forum post, but I have read the blogs occasionally. Up to this point we have been following Dave Ramsey's baby steps, but now feel like we are "sluggish" and want to be saving/investing more, but also want to buy a house. So many directions to take, and it never feels like we are making much traction or getting anywhere. Part of this is job situation. I only have a temporary job, and drive an hour to work 1 way, husband has an okay job, and drives about 15 minutes. I am constantly looking for permanent work, but have yet to find anything, and I am still holding out to "work in my field" which is a wildlife biologist...but anyway...
Income: Pretty stable at this moment, husband $40000 gross, me $30000 gross.
Current expenses: We have been doing a detailed budget for almost 2 years now, here is copy of this months
Sarah Pay Check $850.00
Sarah Pay Check 2 $850.00
Hubs Pay Check 1 $1,091.00
Hubs Pay Check 2 $1,091.00
Total Income $3,882.00
Rent $800.00
Phone $85.55
Cable $63.14
Groceries $450.00 (this probably seems high, but we support our local co-op and eat mostly organic, and if we have to give up other things to eat like this, we certainly would-we eat at Chipotle every Friday, but that is the extent our our eating out).
Entertainment $70.00
Travel $200.00 (Friends and Family all live far away, this is not an "every month" expense, but it is sometimes).
Matt fun $20.00
Sarah fun $20.00
Gas $400.00
Spending Money $150.00
Retirement $100.00
Total: $2358.69
The remainder we put in a savings account towards "house fund."-this month about $1500
Assets: In our savings account, we currently have $23000, which includes about half as "emergency" fund. The other half can be considered "house fund" and some other sinking funds (like car insurance, car repairs, etc.)
My husband puts 3% into his 401K at work (and is matched 3%), and we both have about $2500 in Roth IRAs, but haven't been adding to them lately (cause we are only on 3B of the Dave Ramsey plan), but I have been trying to do $100 a month into mine. I drive a 2005 Subaru Outback and my husband a '96 of the same. I keep hoping I will get a job a closer to home, making the fuel efficiency thing not a big deal, but I did just buy this car 6 months ago, and increased my fuel economy significantly from my '96 Subaru legacy.
Including the cars and retirement accounts I guess our total assets would be about $34000, if that is how that works...
Liabilities: None, but we have only been out of student loan debt for 2 years.
Specific Question(s): Why do I still feel like me are making no traction? Our next goal is to buy a house, but I'm not sure when would be a good time to do that, given our (my) job situation. Also, the houses where we live are quite expense, 20% for a small "fixer-upper" in town is about $30000 and we'd like to move back to PA (we live near the border with MD) because the schools are better, but property taxes are about $5000 a year or more. I also have really big house dreams (like reasonable house, lots of land, self sustaining farm, kind of thing). But clearly that isn't going to happen in our area, with our income, anytime soon. We also want kids in the near future, but we have a tiny one bedroom apartment. Should we continue renting (but move?) to have kids and keep saving for our dream home? Buy something smaller/in a bad school district/with no land sooner rather than later to get some equity now (or soon-sh)? Not do anything until the job situation is figured out? How long is too long to wait?
I hope this makes sense. I'll be around to answer any questions. Hope this is in line with general MMM forum topics!
Thanks