Life Situation: Married filing jointly, no dependents, 24F and 26M near Lexington, KY
Gross Salary/Wages: $4,654
Pre-tax deductions:- 401k: $109 (only one of us has a 401k offered)
- Health Insurance: $71
- Pre-tax vision/dental: $15
Qualified Dividends & Long Term Capital Gains: $14 monthly
Adjusted Gross Income: $4,555
Taxes: $1,022
Current expenses:- Rent: $675
- Electricity: $104 (could be lower, but our apartment has absolutely awful insulation)
- Water: $40 (This is the flat rate for minimum usage level)
- Internet: $59
- Fuel: $217 (reimbursed $97 for work-related travel)
- Groceries: $344 (working on reducing this with re-usable Keurig cups and less waste)
- Car Insurance: $172 (age and 2 minor accidents in past year bring this up)
- Car Maintenance & registration: ~$75 monthly
- Christmas/Holidays: ~$50 monthly
- Individual dental plan: $34 (This easily pays for itself for now, unfortunately)
- Dentist: ~$25 monthly
- Dining: $150 (we see this as a big place to save, cut back to 1/month instead of 1/week)
- Entertainment: $260 (pre-MMM legacy. Guilt-free spending we grew into. Video games, fast food, movies, audio-books, etc.)
- Pets: $40 (mid-grade food and litter for 2 cats)
- Misc.: ~$50 (ice-melt, Urgent care co-pays, special occasions, etc.)
- Subscriptions: $21 (Costco, Amazon Prime, and Netflix)
Assets:- 401k: $1,158.97 - VTSMX
- 2005 Chevrolet Impala: $1,949
- 2011 Nissan Sentra: $5,898
- Anthem stock: $9,229.64 (this was inherited)
- Cash: $15,824
Liabilities:Student loans:
Total monthly payment: $139
8 years remaining on repayment
Current Principal Rate
$1,288 4.25%
$2,992 3.15%
$3,386 3.15%
$3,446 3.61%
$1,292 3.61%
Total: $12,404
Specific Question(s): I just started reading MMM a month or so ago. I started from the beginning, but I've only made it up to 2012, so I may be missing some more recent relevant posts. The current budget reflects our spending habits prior to reading MMM. We are working on making this more Mustachian. I did install our own internet modem this month, bringing our Internet down from $68.59 to $58.59, and ordered a well-reviewed reusable Keurig cup to cure us of our $43 per month coffee expenses (listed here under groceries). We don't have a good rhythm for meal planning and cooking, so sometimes we wind up having to throw out spoiled food. We hate that, and that is definitely an area we will be paying more attention to. We also tend to get those easy frozen pasta bag meals, which we're trying to move away from. They were a habit developed when we were planning our wedding and had no time to cook, and didn't want to be eating fast food every night. That should bring down our grocery budget, but I have no hard numbers on how much.
We are also planning on cutting our eating out budget down to one restaurant visit per month instead of one per week, which should bring that category down to at least $50, and that would allow us to be able to eat wherever we want for that one time a month.
The entertainment budget is tricky. We haven't had shared expenses, or incomes that allowed an entertainment budget previously, so the amount was picked rather arbitrarily about a year ago and we grew into it. This is where we categorize our video games (bought on sale), fast food, movies, audio-books, replacement charger cables, etc. We got a library membership earlier this week that we hope will have a good audio-book selection to decrease that cost. My husband listens to these in the car at work. We are working on being more intentional about what we spend out of this category and optimizing it so that we only purchase specific things that we get joy out of that is greater than the freedom we lose for it. I'm hoping this will lower this category naturally, since neither of us has expensive tastes.
I just found the account where the inherited Anthem stock was stored a few months ago. My husband inherited these before we were married and I took over the finances, and I had to do some digging from dividend checks that were received. I understand that we need to move this to a much more diverse set of holdings, probably by replacing our income with it and pushing the equivalent amount into the 401k, but we live in an area that greatly favors buying over renting, to the tune of a 4 year breaking point including closing costs, according to the NYTimes calculator. So we are wanting to keep the door open for a home purchase as soon as possible. The in-laws have offered to match our down payment with the provision that we not liquidate the stocks to do so, so I'm not sure how they would feel about us temporarily withdrawing the stocks to protect ourselves from the volatility in the meantime. We are currently on track to have enough money to purchase a house with 20% down with this plan in September for a $150k house ($15k from us for down payment, $15k from in-laws for down payment, $5k closing costs, and ~$1,300 budgeted for moving costs). Whether we should do so at that time is a little complicated, because...
My job. I've worked in IT for the same company since I graduated 2 years ago with a BA in Computer Science. I am the higher earner, earning ~$2,822 gross per month to my husband's $1,917. However, he has a standard full-time position with his company, with a 401k and paid time off for vacations and sick leave. I am eligible for my workplace health insurance due to ACA shenanigans, but as far as they're concerned I am "contracted" through an internal staffing agency. That doesn't seem to fly with the federal government any more for denying health coverage, but they still do not offer a 401k package or any paid time off for any reason for me. This has caused a fair amount of stress, because I feel extremely guilty when I stay home sick, and don't feel that I can afford to take any time off to myself, at $128 net per day. I've been told since February that they are actively working on pushing through the conversion of my position from "contracted" to FTE, which would bring a 401k with 200% matching up to 5%, a cheap and comprehensive HMO health plan ($0 deductible, $6,350 OOP maximum) and vacation time starting at 2 weeks and capping at 4 weeks per year. I don't know what the proposed salary for this would be. I currently gross approximately $34k per year, but the company is part of a publicly funded university, so the salaries are public record, and the only person in my department who actually makes that much is the secretary (all due respect for all she does for us!). My immediate coworkers make between 46-48k, with close to 2 decades of seniority, but no college degrees. They have great contempt for my degree, so I predict that I would be offered a salary of no more than 45k. The department can't afford the kind of dissent that would happen if they offered me more, since just the 3 of us manage a very large volume of work. This plus their 401k match would make the overall salary $49,500, IF I stay there for the 5 years required to vest. The job is very easy for me. When I actually put my phone away and work (which is what I prefer to do. I feel guilty on my phone), I occasionally get very involved discussions from my coworkers insisting that I am doing too much and need to slow down to avoid burnout. This baffles me because I really don't feel like I'm exerting myself at all when that happens. Sometimes I wonder if a more challenging career that paid more would be helpful for FI and personal achievement, but I'm concerned with the risks that could come with that, of winding up with a worse job that demands too much of my time outside of 40 hours for too little return. $45k seems quite low for my field, which is confirmed by looking at salaries of employees in other departments in my own organization, and $34k with no benefits honestly is starting to feel a little insulting. How do I know when to cut my losses or pay my dues?
I apologize for the wall of text. If you feel that any of the questions would be better suited to a separate post later on, please let me know. I just wanted to provide as complete a picture as possible for my initial summary.