ChildMisc (non childcare) $170 $2,044
What does the miscellaneous represent that other child spending doesn't?
Mostly gear (high chair, bouncer, etc.). I'm hanging on to it till either we have a second kid or decide to be a one child family, then I'm going to resell it. Some items I'm spending a bit more on with the idea of buying a better quality thing once instead of multiples over time. I keep hearing about people buying multiple strollers and it boggles my mind.
Clothing/Shoes $40 $480
Is this for just the child or all three of you? Might be kind of high either way.
Everyone. I think my maternity clothes purchases might be inflating that number, I'm not sure when exactly those purchases fell but it did skew my usual clothing purchase pattern.
Dining (Lunch/Dinner/Etc.) $202 $2,428
Groceries $356 $4,274[/i]
Is one of these eating out? Combined total seems high.
It totally is high. We've already smacked ourselves in the head and will be brown bagging it more in the future.
Life Insurance $46 $552
What kind of insurance is this, are you getting your $500 worth for something you will hopefully never need? Can't you get cheap/free term insurance through your workplaces?
Term, it's in addition to what we get through work. When we originally got it neither of our works offered life insurance. I do feel like we're getting our $500 worth.
Miscellaneous $792 $9,504
Big black hole. This is your second miscellaneous category.
Yup. Unfortunately at this point I'm not going to have the time to really dig into this for a couple weeks but I really do want (need) to find out what this is.
Phone (cell) $120 $1,440
Phone (landline) $37 $444[/i]
Why do you have cell phone(s) and a landline? The total is really high.
Cancelled the landline yesterday!
Shopping $55 $655
This is your third miscellaneous black hole!
Mostly random household stuff, but I'll add it to the list with "Misc" for further investigation. Thanks for pointing it out.
Anyways, it's easy to nitpick other people's spending (and kind of fun), but what are your goals? How much do you want to spend? What do you want to achieve? What was your spending like before you had a child? What categories do you think you can cut back on.
Goals: Replace my POS car by the end of 2016, possibly have a second child, still save for retirement and not push retirement too much further in the future. Our overall spending was good before we had a child but I mainly know that because of the amount we were able to transfer to savings, not because of the more granular level of being able to say our spending in a given category was good or not.
Categories to cut back on - as I already said, we cut out the landline (after saying "we should do that" for way, way too long). We will revert to our old lunch habits - predominantly brown bagging it and eating out maybe twice a week, and the eat out days will be at cheaper places rather than $15pp sit down restaurants like we've gotten into the habit of doing.
(b) But: I don't see much pre-tax retirement contribution in there. Free 25% extra money is nothing to sneeze at.
Good point. Definitely on the list to consider once I get the expenses sorted out better.
(c) Your cell phone bills are high. Cricket or Fi will get you down to ~$70/month or a bit less with no real reduction in anything ( http://da-data.blogspot.com/2015/10/comparing-prepaid-cell-plans-public.html ), though Fi is phone-specific. It's usually worth switching even if you have to pay some early termination fee, but check carefully.
Last time I looked into this the network used by the cheaper carriers recommended on here has a gap in coverage near my house, so we are basically in the middle of a dead zone. Very annoying.
