Hello! Finally got around to pulling all the numbers together for a good case study.
The big picture- Me 28 and my wife 23, one kid 1.5. Plan to have 1 to 3 more kids (possibly adopting). My wife is naturally frugal, and I was raised in a very low-income family, so I know how to not spend tons of money. Before we got married I didn't save much but I didn't get into very much debt, either. We did the Dave Ramsey thing shortly after we got married, and I discovered MMM earlier this year. We read through Your Money or Your Life and plan to implement some of the tracking methods from that as well.
Income: My job pays 50k a year before all deductions. 2-3% raises anticipated every year, but no large pay increase is likely any time soon. Quarterly bonuses vary depending on plant performance, maximum is $1000, average about $750ish. My wife's income is variable and will be decreasing this fall. Guestimating about 15k a year?
I will possibly be taking on a part time job once my schedule changes (Will be working 3 day weeks, 12-14 hours a day). I don't have any "side hustle" ideas in the works right now. I write kids books, but I do it slowly and have currently spent way more to self-publish online than I earned from them so far.
Current expenses:
Automatically deducted from each check:
Insurance (Medical, optical, dental) - $4092 per year
Life, Accident, etc. insurance - $74 per year
Flex spending account (pre-tax) - $250 (will probably stop doing this next year since the paperwork to get the FSA to pay anything is a PITA).
401k - $3,000 per year. This is the max amount the company matches.
Employee stock purchase - $3,000 per year. (Taken out of each check and purchased at a 15% discount twice a year.)
Take home pay after all taxes and automatic deductions - 31,069
Expenses First column is total 2013, second column is average monthly 2013, third column is monthly average so far 2014
House Payment 10,810 - 901 - 902
Power 1,232 - 103 - 117 (Electric and gas. We are getting a wood-burning stove installed so this may go down next winter.)
Water 760 - 63 - 55
Charitable Giving 1,954 - 163 - 122
Car Insurance 1,005 - 84 - 91
Other Insurance 723 - 60 - 18
Phone 2,008 - 167 - 163 (We use a local carrier, but not a lot of great options in our area.)
Internet 630 - 53 - 55 (Very few options in our area.)
Food 2,435 - 203 - 180
Eat Out 353 - 29 - 80 (This includes all starbucks, ice cream, etc. including during our vacation last month, so average will drop.)
Gas 2,041 - 170 - 163 (Started really trying to bike commute this summer)
Fun Stuff 173 - 14 - 21 (This includes netflix and redbox)
Gifts 2,003 - 167 - 50 (This average will go up come December! Wife and I both have big families.)
Vehicle (not gas) ? ? - 97 (Didn't track this separately until this year)
Medical ? ? - 52 (Didn't track this separately until this year)
Misc. 4,611 - 384 - 788 (This is high for 2014 because we took a week vacation and made some larger, 1-time purchases)
Total 30,738 - 2,585 - 2,953
Assets:
401k ballance - $41,877
7,600 in company stock (Good dividend paying stock)
10,000 in other stocks (Disney and ROBO index. Will sell and move to vanguard indexes once I learn more about it from you fine folks.)
55k of our house paid off, house is worth about 135k.
About 5k in checking and savings accounts.
Liabilities:
Around 70k left to pay on the house at 3.5%.
10k on the car, due in two years. (Pre-paid lease, punch me now. Signed it preMMM. At least it's a Honda Fit, right?)
2008 KIA Sedona, paid off. We will probably end up selling this to my parents for peanuts in a few years, not sure what it is actually worth
As you can see, we live mostly on my income and my wife's has been going towards home improvement and/or big purchases. We just plopped down $10k on an extra house payment the other day, all of which came from my wife's job.
Specific Question(s):
What would you do if you were me? Think it's realistic to plan on an early retirement? We currently are planning to pay off the house in 10 years or less (12 if we make no extra payments) and then I would be free to quit the full-time job and work part time. We plan to homeschool our kid(s), so it is possible my wife will stop working at some point. However, I would rather us both be working part time and participating in schooling and raising the little ones.