Hi, folks. We're a small family – 30 M, 29 F, 7 F. We used to be super frugal, debt-free, etc. Then we bought a house, and that house created a lot of expenses. We got out of that house, started new jobs, moved a few times. All in the midst of that, we got off track.
Now, we're in a pretty good place financially, but our bank accounts don't reflect our income as well as it could. We have made strides in the right direction, such as taking our daughter out of private school when we managed to get into a good public school. We've been cycling for three years, so we've avoided the $150/mo insurance, $100/mo gas, and $150/mo parking in the city. Now, we sometimes rent a ZipCar for weekend events or what-have-you.
I've attached screenshots of our current budget, and one of the budget I'm working on. Please see the attachments.
- Income
As you can see, we're only netting $5,500 right now between the two of us. That's pretty low for Seattle – less than the median individual income. I'm working on this, and so is my partner. I'm in school for software development, and my partner is considering getting into real estate. Real estate may not provide much more in the way of income, but it will get her out of the service industry.
- Debt
We only have some small debts. The $50/mo goes to DFAS for a check they overpaid me. As you'll see in the newer budget, I'm going to pay that off this month.
The Prosper loan is for my evening schooling, and only has a balance of $8,000, at 4.5% (if I remember correctly). We're going to roll the DFAS payment and our monthly savings into that.
- Things to Cut Out
We're on Sprint, and yesterday I cancelled our $19/line device insurance. We're considering getting Ting (or a similar service) and getting cheaper devices. Only trouble with that is the up-front cost of getting different phones, because we would be giving our current ones back to Sprint. I'm looking into Palm's new tiny phone, some cheaper phones such as Moto e4, etc. The most important aspect for having a smartphone, for us, is recording transactions in YNAB when we make them. Thankfully, it looks like there's some great affordable options out there, especially used. We should be able to cut this expense from $195 (now $157) to $80 or less, plus the upfront cost of devices. Our biggest hangup is abandoning iOS. I've tried to do it twice in the past, and the devices were horrendously buggy even brand new. So there's that, and our strong dislike for Google spying on us.
I'm planning on getting rid of Netflix and Spotify.
Under Periodical Expenses, I'm not sure we could cut anything out. Harry's is a razor blade delivery subscription that is cheaper than anything else. Amazon constantly has the best deals. We use rewards from the CapitalOne card to pay the annual fee. Headspace is a meditation app that all three of us use daily. Zipcar annual fee is required to use Zipcar, and it's the lowest tier membership. Thrive Market is a wholesale club we use for groceries.
Speaking of groceries, we live near a Trader Joe's (where we do the bulk of our grocery shopping), QFC, Safeway, and a local co-op grocer. We never go to Safeway, and we get a couple of items from QFC (such as tortillas) because they're cheaper there. We don't go to the co-op grocer anymore. We used to a lot because my partner worked there, making their prices better than QFC and Safeway. We don't eat meals out. However, sometimes we run late, and have ordered dinner a couple times a month in the past year (average spending was $120/mo. over the last 12 months). Definitely room for improvement here.
The $50/mo for Dining/Specialty are for once-a-month ice cream trips and if we want beer, wine, coffee, what-have-you. I think this one could use a bit more scrutiny on our part.
Only I have life insurance right now, because my partner hasn't had much time lately to start hers. None of us have health or dental insurance.
Health & Beauty is one that I don't have much control over. My partner has skin issues, so this expense is made up of skin products and vitamins for her and our daughter.
The Bicycles expense is savings for parts and repairs. The brake pads for these bikes are expensive! And proprietary.
The Kiddo Account is for our daughter's allowance that she earns for cleaning up after herself, reading daily, helping out, etc. She has a spreadsheet that we go over every couple of weeks to see how she's doing. It earns 12% APY. She has to plan out purchases and make conscious decisions about whether or not that purchase is worth it.
Transportation is for taking the bus on the weekends to take our daughter to ballet because it's not a very safe bike ride. There's also room in there for taking ReachNow/Zipcar/Car2Go if something happens (our elevator goes down sometimes, or I can't take my bike to work because I have to do something with the company car and then get a car service home to be home in time to get the kiddo from the bus stop, etc.). We do need to try to be more frugal in this area. The past couple of months have been doozies because I couldn't carpool with anyone to my friend's weekend getaway before getting married, and we had his wedding last weekend, etc.
Holidays, Summer Camp, and Extracurriculars are variable categories, so we assigned the average cost divided by 12 to save for those expenses. We're now starting to save our credit card rewards for holidays, so hopefully that budget goes down.
- Fixed Expenses
We live in an income-based unit, referred to in Seattle as MFTE. The whole property is a "normal" property, but with a few units set aside for the MFTE program. We've lived here for 2.5 years. Our rent goes up about 6% per year. We might look into moving closer to our daughter's school when I'm done with my evening schooling.
Internet is fixed, and is necessary for video chatting with my school in the evenings.
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Behaviorally, we need to make some wiser decisions. We use YNAB to track everything, but we haven't been adhering to YNAB's rules like we used to. We're also using credit cards for everything, and paying the balance. We haven't paid credit card interest since before we were married over eight years ago.
We have saved $5,000 this year and that's sitting in a savings account earning 2.02% APY.
I think that covers everything. I'd love some advice, slaps in the face, or whatever you've got!
