Hey guys, I'm new to the forum :) I discovered MMM through the Washington Post article and I instantly fell in love. :)
I've never posted before, so please let me know if I'm breaking some kind of rule or etiquette. I would love if you guys could analyze my living situation and tell me where I can improve. I would LOVE suggestions, thoughts, constructive criticism, anything. I aspire to be a Mustachian but I would love some help in the right direction!!
Deep breath. Here goes:
My husband and I have been married for 3 years this May. We have two adorable little children (girl 22 months and boy 10 weeks) and we're very happy and frugal by nature.
Right now I stay at home with the children. My husband works as some kind of system analyst in the city and he commutes to work. We make about $41k after taxes, about $2200/month. When I had one child, I would work on freelance projects online through oDesk to earn some extra income that we would sock into our house fund/savings account. I find now that I have two children, though, I don't have NEARLY enough time to do this as I used to!
Right now we have $13,500 in a house fund and $1K in an emergency fund. Our son was born with a neural tube defect that required a long NICU stay and a leave of absence from work, so our emergency fund has been depleted. Thankfully, hubby is back at work and we're getting regular paychecks again. Unfortunately, we have $30K in student loans that I acquired in college when I was quite a bit less "mustachian" :(. To put a positive spin on this, though, I graduated with $62K worth of debt (yikes...so embarassing) but we've been working like dogs to obliterate our debt as much as we possibly can. Up until recently, we put most of our paycheck and tax returns into paying back our loans. When we found out we were expecting our second child, and then found out shortly thereafter that he had Spina Bifida, we started paying the minimums on our loans and socked all the extra away in our saving account (we knew that, having special needs as he did, he would be in the NICU for quite some time and we would be hit with a big bill and lots of expenses. We were right!).
For the past two years we've lived with my parents rent-free so that we can save/pay off as much as humanly possible. Our monthly expenses are food ($125/week), cell phones ($50/month pay as you go plans), student loans ($309/month minimum payment) gas (about $50/week), transportation to and from the city ($175), parking ($20) and netflix ($8). Since Henry was born, we've had some copays and medical expenses that have been about $50-$60/month so far. Ocassionally we eat out or splurge at Half Price Books, but we really do try to save as much as we can and keep costs low. Our biggest expense is obviously transportation to and from work, but I'm reluctant to have my husband look for a different job because our insurance is so stellar, and our son has special needs. We have an HMO with no deductible and I can't imagine what a NICU stay would have cost us on a different insurance plan. Anyway.
We put away at least $500 per paycheck in the house fund, and now we're slowly trying to build our emergency fund back up from (almost) nothing. I cloth diaper the kiddos, use cloth wipes, shop at Aldi, cook from scratch, make our own laundry soap, shop garage sales, etc. We're homebodies and frugal by nature so we don't have a lot of expensive hobbies or anything like that.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something but that's basically it. We don't have a lot of expenses, but it still feels like we are barely making ends meet between saving for a house and trying to evict Sallie Mae. We want to up our retirement (currently we put 10% in a 401K and have about 20K in there last time I checked) and be able to afford to move out of my parents' house eventually.
Thoughts?
(ETA: we drive a used, paid-for 2003 Toyota Matrix. Hub takes it to the train station in the morning and then commutes to the office, so we really only use it to/from work and about once a month to visit his parents an hour away. We pay car insurance every six months in one lump-sum payment to save $$. We have a low payment (like $3-400 for six months, I want to say?) but that may change after this recent fender bender I've gotten into over the weekend :-/. D'oh.)