The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: DoubleDown on February 12, 2013, 01:15:08 PM
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Not counting your housing payment (rent or mortgage/etc.)*, what is your annual budget and family size, if you don't mind sharing? I'm trying to get an idea of the range of budgets among the MMM community and determine if my own family's spending is within that range.
*I'm leaving out housing since there is such a big difference based on geography
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For 2012, we spent about $24k excluding rent. For 2013, I think it's possible we could get as low as $13k (2012 had some expensive car repairs and travel), but more likely around $15-18k.
2 adults, 1 infant. More details in my journal thread. (https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/journals/tlv's-journal/)
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For just myself, I just did a rough calculation of between $7-8K if housing is discounted.
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I spent $38k in 2012, minus rent. We are a family of 4 (2 adults, a 4 year old and a 6 year old). Not very mustachian. Food is about $300 over what it should be, and I somehow lose about $900 each month in "uncategorized" expenses. It needs work. My ER planned spending is $2500 per month... so I need to shave off that $900 of waste.
Annual budget= $30k
Actual spending= $38k
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$1980/month not including rent, so about $24k annually. I think we could probably cut down a bit more, but I'm happy with our numbers; I think we hit a good balance of frugality & spending; present day vs. future, etc.
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Family of four - about $24,000/yr with no lifestyle changes (go out to eat multiple times a week, at least one 2hr round-trip per week to nearest large city to do shopping, one large vacation such as 3-4 days of Disney plus a 7day cruise). $18,000 would see a reduction in how much we go out to eat (multiple times a month vs per week), would try to bulk-up more on our shopping trips to reduce them to 2-3 times a month, and the vacation would be a bit scaled down (just some Disney, or cruise, perhaps 3day cruise and 3 days Disney?). $12,000 would have us virtually never going out to eat, we'd definitely need a deep freezer to reduce our grocery trips, staycation (hate that word) consisting of us camping at a nearby park perhaps?
All those numbers are based on us living in Tennessee. Haven't run the numbers here in Australia, I don't think they'd be that far off (grocery spending is similar, utilities aren't that far off, vacations cost more though).
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Single Male - 2012 saw a total of about $22K in expenditures. $7860 to apartment, so 14,140 to non-rent expenses.
I bought some stupid things that I have since disposed of (sold).
2013 plan is to be at $14,000 with rent, ~$10,000 before rent.
January was about $1,000 and Feburary is at $800 so far. Looking good for me!
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Mine this year is $46K, which includes a one off $5K present we will be giving to our youngest son as a 21st birthday present (as we did for his older brother).
That's for two of us and two dogs. Our eldest boy lives with us as well, but he contributes $5K per year to offset the extra $5K we spend on food and utilities by having him there, so it cancels out.
This is all pre-ER, so it is against a current net household income (not including my son's) of $100K per year. If I ER early next year, that household income will drop to $60K indexed to COLA for eternity at about a 2% SWR, which screams "JUST DO IT"!
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Single female, 21 = $7200 (last year).
My rent was $8800, moee than twice my other expenses! (I only have 3 other h house mates though.)
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Household of one. Last year's non-rent expenses were roughly $9500. This year the budget says $8000, but that's a stretch goal...
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Single female with two pets. I probably spent around $15k in 2012. I only started tracking actual spending late in 2012 with Mint so that's just an estimate based on my budget, not my actuals. I just checked Mint and I'm around $9k excluding the Home category since August 2012.
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Single female with two pets. I probably spent around $15k in 2012. I only started tracking actual spending late in 2012 with Mint so that's just an estimate based on my budget, not my actuals. I just checked Mint and I'm around $9k excluding the Home category since August 2012.
My advice - Check mint regularly, especially the expenses, in order to find waste.. I started using it in Q2 of 2012. My expenditure graph has a cliff the month I started using Mint.
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Can we get a poll here?
Household of two with pets, discounting rent: about $7,000. Most of that is food and utilities and the occasional vet bill, we don't buy much of anything else.
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My wife and I (and our 2 dogs) spent about $13-15k last year, excluding mortgage & property tax. Three years in a row of being at this level of spending!
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Right around $9000, single male with one pet.
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My advice - Check mint regularly, especially the expenses, in order to find waste.. I started using it in Q2 of 2012. My expenditure graph has a cliff the month I started using Mint.
After the Home category, Travel and Food and Dining are the big ones. I had a big, pre-mustachian trip planned for my 40th birthday. Now that's done (fabulous, no regrets) my travel budget/savings is much smaller. What I dislike about Mint is that Food and Dining includes eating out and groceries so I have to do some work to suss out the break down. But I do spend too much on restaurants. Definitely got some fat to trim there!
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Wow, you guys are good! Good to have something to aim for. My third biggest category is cash, which is what I am trying to figure out at the moment. Logged it all for January, then my phone crashed and I lost it all! But clearly there is way too much coffee in there... February should be revealing.
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In 2012 without rent we spent about $28,000 for two people. We don't have a budget. I just track what we happen to spend. We could have spent quite a bit less but have no need to.
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We're at around 12-14K, two people, two large dogs, several cats. I don't know exactly because we don't keep a formal budget anymore.
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Last year my husband and I spent about 32k if you don't count our (tiny) mortgage. This included $6000 for our wedding and about $5000 for our honeymoon. I'm excited to see how things look during a "normal" year, and now that we are really buckling down and paying attention.
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We spent around $26,000 for two people in 2012, including $7500 for travel - a trip to France in the summer, and a Caribbean cruise in the winter.
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Without housing? $3,000 maybe?
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For 2 adults, 2 children (1 child in daycare) our actual spending for 2012 including things taken out of my checks like health, life and disability insurance premiums but not including taxes/SS/medicare and excluding mortgage:
$38232
Without daycare: $26892
That includes some unusual home maintenance stuff (highest year for home repair for us in the past 5 years). It also likely includes about $2000 or so that shouldn't really be there because it includes job-related travel from November and December that I'm still waiting on reimbursement for (I filled out forms wrong, sigh :) ).
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For my household of 1, my annual budget is $11K, which includes $5K worth of international travel.
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Household of 2 without housing: $7380
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Without housing and without contributions to investment accounts I am at about $13,000/year for just me.
That's assuming I am splitting the cost of utilities on my house with someone else, and that I'll average $600 (of cash, not counting credit card rewards) for travel each year.
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Family of 5: about 27-29 without mortgage and property tax. 10-12k of that is food....(try to keep it under 1k a month)
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For all of you singles under $10K per year (and couples under 15K), I'd love to see a line-by-line budget to compare to my own... I know there is a bit of fluff and luxury in my budget, but I don't think it'd be easy for me to get to 8K/year. I am guessing the equation for at least a few of you is to subtract a vehicle - no fuel or maint would help with about 10% of my budget.
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Family size: 2 Adults 2 large dogs
2012 End of Year:
Income= 56.4 K
Expenses= 44.3 K
Expenses-Mort/Tax/Ins=31.4 K
*Discovered MMM 1/2 through the year
Estimated 2013:
Income: 75 K
Expenses: 55K K (4x debt payment and will be debt free come OCT)
Expenses-Mort/Tax/Ins= 42 K
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Single Female.
In 2012, $14,841.03 excluding rent. Amount would be much higher if I hadn't started reading MMM and ERE quarter of the year.
In 2013, hoping to keep my good habits from January and budgeting $8,500 excluding rent for 2013.
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Single female, two pets
Without housing: $10,450. I started tracking to the penny in April (was on the unemployment spending plan before that) and moved mid year so I estimated some of these. The overall number is fairly accurate though.
@kudy
Car = $1,700 (gas, insurance, maintenance) This should go down as I am now biking to work.
Pets = $1,000 (one large vet bill is half of this)
Bills = $1,400 (I wasn't sure if this was included in "housing" but it's there). This should go up with the move.
Internet = $400
Food = $2,400
Misc = $300 (fun money, tickets to events, etc.)
Personal care = $450 (a few BIFL items, should be much lower going forward)
Clothing = $1,100 (waay too high - essentially replaced my entire worn out college wardrobe with this, so I guess it could be worse. Will definitely be lower going forward as I have bought higher quality items that will not wear out)
Healthcare = $350 (subsidized)
Bike = $200 ('new' bike and some repairs)
Household = $200
Computer = $450
Sport dues/etc. = $500
I could pretty easily get under 8k a year, especially if I don't include household bills. I will save at least $600 in gas next year (conservative estimate). Non-vet pet spending is around $600 give or take. Clothing will be markedly lower (goal is $500 - the last of the worn out items and nothing "new"). No new computer hopefully.
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@ Kudy - my boyfriend and I spent $19,284 excluding travel in 2012. Here's the breakdown:
Housing = 9257
Food + Dining = 3845(We had a few very unfrugal months at the start of the year before we smartened up, now it's $230/month)
Bills + Utils = 1569
Transportation = 1149
Shopping = 1109(primarily as I had to buy two new wardrobes due to moving from a warehouse to a casual office to a formal office)
Personal Care = 867
Other = 1483(Gifts, concerts, symphonies, pet supplies mostly)
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Single, 1 sickly mutt
2012 sans mortgage: $21000 ($1750/month)
2013 since getting more serious: $1060/month
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Without housing? $3,000 maybe?
Grantemeaname, if that isn't a typo, can you give me some tips on how to manage on $60 week?
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Grantemeaname, if that isn't a typo, can you give me some tips on how to manage on $60 week?
Living in Ohio helps a lot. I also live with three roommates, two of which are badass mustachians -- so we have most of our minor expenses pretty tightly controlled and we can split things four ways (and to be clear, the budgeted amount is for one of us, not four). Having no money and no real earning ability (yet), and peers that spend no money, spending very little is pretty natural and effortless.
Here's what our monthly budget looks like:
- Rent: $325/person/month. We're college kids, and being willing to live far from campus got us a nice house for cheap. "Far" is only a 20 minute walk, but it's double the time other people are willing to walk, so we get the cheap, nice housing (pick two: close, cheap, good). Splitting a 3 bedroom house four ways helps too.
- Groceries and household items: $100/person/month Groceries: Buy in bulk, especially rice and beans. Pack lunch, don't eat out. Comparison shop (we do Costco, Giant Eagle, restaurant supply, ethnic grocery store, and Aldi). Household items: Hand-me-downs and craigslist freebies are great, as are good old bleach, baking soda, and vinegar for cleaning.
- Utilities: $50/person/month Keep the house at 62 all winter and 84 all summer, wash clothes cold then line dry. I honestly don't know why this is so relatively low, it's not something we're very good at minimizing. Here, too, splitting bills four ways helps.
- Transportation: $25/month The city bus costs $9/semester because it's mandatory and few use it, so transportation is only occasional gas for the car for grocery shopping and trips home (my family's unmustachian fourth car lives with me up here). When I'm done with school, I'm looking at downgrading to a 90's del Sol (or equivalent) or a scooter plus zipcar. I've got a friend with an incredible garage and assortment of tools, so we do maintenance like changing the brakes and tires. This is one area I'm admittedly subsidized by my parents, but it's also not an area I'm that expensive in.
- Discretionary spending: $75/month (ish) I've got textbooks to buy and a somewhat pricy homebrewing habit (though splitting the costs with friends and doing commissioned projects helps a TON), as well as eating out once a month or so. Cheap thrills like volunteering, metro parks and free campus events cut down on entertainment spending.
- Health insurance: $0 Alright, here's the secret to my success (and no, it's not that I don't have health insurance (https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/financial-advice-for-a-college-student/msg15149/#msg15149)). My family is enough of a medical trainwreck that we hit out of pocket maximums with regularity every year in the first few months, so I can ride for free. Even at a conservative estimate of the cost of getting my own plan - $2300 through my university for just the academic year - I would be looking at a 50% increase in my spending. Thanks mom and dad!
If you add up everything but housing, that's $250/month, or $3,000 a year. Health insurance alone costs about that much, of course. Even with that caveat, though, I'm proud of these numbers.
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Last year my husband and I spent about 32k if you don't count our (tiny) mortgage. This included $6000 for our wedding and about $5000 for our honeymoon. I'm excited to see how things look during a "normal" year, and now that we are really buckling down and paying attention.
Beautiful! I am a single male, so maybe this will change when it comes time for my wedding, but wedding expenses are outrageous. My sister got married a few months back, and I think the final cost was between 30-50K!
That's 3-5 years expenses!
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@mpbaker22 This website I found very helpful when my wife and I planned our Nuptials. http://www.costofwedding.com/ (http://www.costofwedding.com/)
You can type in your zip code and it spits out an idea of what folks in your area spend. You can also go into some of the categories and select what you will/won't have at your wedding and it will give you a range. This is great for comparison shopping when looking for deals. We at least $500 by purchasing $2/bottle trader joe wine and a small opening fee with the caterer. We spent $13K at it was a rather lavish wedding.
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Excluding mortgage and property tax, we spent ~$39k in 2012, which included the birth of our first child (thus some increased medical costs and buying some initial gear). I would say our typical year is looking like it would be $30-40k at this point, excluding mortgage/tax for a family of 3.
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Family of four - dad plus 3 kids 50% of the time, no pets.
All in number is $71K.
Excluding income taxes, payroll taxes, and housing costs, we're at $42K.
Further excluding child support costs, we're at $26K.
(Drats! I don't feel very mustachian any more... :-( )
2Cor521
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Family of four, plus 1 dog and 3 cats:
Excluding housing puts us around $38k.
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Around $20,000 for two people. My housing is another $18,000. I'm probably one of the few people around here who doesn't really budget or track my expenses well so that is a very general ballpark based on a full year take home minus average savings rate.
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Family of 5 for 2013 budget without mortgage/property tax/home insurance and without charitable donations: $27700
Utilities(1490 sq ft and always home):4200
Home maintenance and improvements: 1800
Transportation(two paid for cars not including vacations): 2820
Food: 3600
Home/health/grooming: 300
Medical Insurance: 4260
Medical co-pays and treatments: 600
Clothing: 500
Education(homeschooling two kids): 2100
Pocket money: 1730
Family birthdays/gifts: 2200
Vacation: 3600
We usually come in 10-20% below budget every year so our spending on everything will most likely be closer to $25K this year. I don't know if everyone is including work deducted medical insurance like I am so for comparison, without that as well our spending should be around $21-22K.
Last year(2012)for everything excluding mortgage, rent, property taxes, home and medical insurance, our family spent just under $25K. We moved across the country and, although the company paid for the movers to haul our stuff, our own trip out here was on our dime and those expenses are included in our year's total.
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Married but keep my own budget, no kids or pets. Projecting annual totals from the past five months, as long as I've been keeping a spreadsheet, looks like yearly it's $6000 housing and utilities, and a little over $5800 for everything else. That doesn't include taxes or investments. $1950 is food.
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2 people, 1 dog in the house. Girlfriend spends her own, I don't know how much it is. According to Mint I'm spending about $14k/year not counting rent.
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Single male, 1 pet - without housing I'm at $8400 per year, with ~$3000 of that being food. Those numbers look good to me, but in reality I'm currently overpaying for too much housing - at least until May.
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Without housing we spent $28,000 last year. Our family has 2 adults and 2 cats.
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$10k includes rent (in the SF Bay Area, most expensive housing market in the world), $6k without rent.
$21k for the (2 human, 1 cat) household, including rent, $15k without rent
For me that's excluding business expenses, for her its excluding a very expensive dental emergency.
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Household of one.
Sans rent I came in at about 7-8K for 2012. Rent was 6K for the year. I only started keeping meticulous track in September of last year so numbers are estimates.
I'm located in a small town in MN. Hoping to relocate soon despite the hike in expenses it will bring.
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Last year my husband and I spent about 32k if you don't count our (tiny) mortgage. This included $6000 for our wedding and about $5000 for our honeymoon. I'm excited to see how things look during a "normal" year, and now that we are really buckling down and paying attention.
Beautiful! I am a single male, so maybe this will change when it comes time for my wedding, but wedding expenses are outrageous. My sister got married a few months back, and I think the final cost was between 30-50K!
That's 3-5 years expenses!
My wedding is costing $5,200 and the honeymoon $1,800 and it feels extravagant. I don't know how other people spend that kind of money.
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Annual expenditure including holidays, but excluding major house maintance (like a new roof):
£12,300 or $19,000 USD
For two adults.
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Roughly 20K for 2 adults and 2 kitties :-)
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$23k, but that includes $5000/year for keeping my horse.
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Comes in at around 45000$ US for two adults and two kids, in Sweden. Annual spendings (with mortgage) do NOT even come close to what we pay in tax anually, so we feel alright with it. This year we will try and cut down grocery spending.
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My Monthly budget is $1,560, of which $650 is rent/utilities.
No roommates, kids, etc.
Mint is really great for keeping track of this stuff
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Mine this year is $46K, which includes a one off $5K present we will be giving to our youngest son as a 21st birthday present (as we did for his older brother).
That's for two of us and two dogs. Our eldest boy lives with us as well, but he contributes $5K per year to offset the extra $5K we spend on food and utilities by having him there, so it cancels out.
Far out! All these other posts are making me feel like a spendypants with my $46K budget. Here's a breakdown of my budget:
EXPENSES
Amenities $5,163 (Utilities are expensive in Australia. eg. Electricity is 34c per kwH where I live!)
Computer $921 (mostly ISP costs)
Dogs $1,562 (best bang for buck out of our entire budget)
Holidays $5,007 (haven't been on a decent one for years, so this year is higher)
House $3,110 (rates and home maintenance. Maybe I shouldn't include this?)
Housekeeping Contribution -$5,222 (what my son pays us for groceries and utilities)
Major Purchases $1,001 (in case something major breaks. Not explicitly planning to spend this)
Medical $2,363 (this is above medicare costs)
Misc Expenses $1,180 (building insurance. Again, exclude?)
Presents $8,012 ($5K for my son's 21st)
Groceries $10,215 ($700 a month on food exclusively, the rest is house sundry items)
Spending $7,210 (down from $14K last year and tracking to be half this again next year)
Transport $5,877 (two cars and a motorcycle. One car will go if I ER)
TOTAL EXPENSES $46,401
Noting that I live in Australia, where our incomes are high and our cost of living seems to match, does anyone see any glaring overly spendy categories? Any other Aussies care to post their annual spend budgets?
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Essentials only for 1 person, £ 10,696.80, still have some fat to cut as well I reckon. Gas/Electric could be cheaper but should go down over the summer.
Sorry a slight mis-calculation I only pay council tax for 10 months of the year so my annual budget is actually. £ 10,546.80
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Single, late 20's.
2012 total expenses including rent $23k, excluding rent would be around $14-$15k
Hoping to hit around $20k this year.
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~$25k for a family of 4.
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Noting that I live in Australia, where our incomes are high and our cost of living seems to match, does anyone see any glaring overly spendy categories? Any other Aussies care to post their annual spend budgets?
I'm single, so my budget will look very different to yours. I'm in Queensland' btw. Your medical and groceries seem perdy high - how many are in your family again? And presents... Other than the $5k one off for the 21st, how do you manage to buy $3k worth of other presents? Who wants that much stuff?
Groceries $2600
Social $1040
Public transport $1040 (something like 3rd most expensive city in the world for this)
Doctor + meds $580
Sport $420
Mobile $180
Spanish class + uni costs $900
Hair + clothes $500
TOTAL $7260
Clearly I'm living quite the high life :-P
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Damn, this makes me feel like I spend a lot more than average. Married but separate finances, one dog and one cat. My half of the annual spending is $20,000, and my spouse spends about the same. So $40k for two adults and two pets!
After mortgage/home reno savings, my biggest expenses are travel ($5,258) and my amorphous 'shopping' category ($4,049) which is generally everything that's not food, utilities, or haircuts.
I'm content with the travel budget (we went on a two week trip to Russia last spring [so awesome but so goddamn expensive] plus many many weekend trips.) We've already got a couple of weekend trips lined up over the next month, and some bigger trips in the summer and fall (hello South America!) But I'd like to work on cutting down the other miscellaneous spending, like clothing. I somehow spent $1,500 on clothing last year! WTF?!! I didn't even think I was that into clothing and shopping! Time for some self reflection.
Hmm, maybe I should join the no spend challenge for March. :) Thanks for the inspiration folks. I always like it when people throw down real numbers. It helps me look more critically at my own budget and zoom out to the big picture.
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Put me in the spendypants category: about $48k last year, excluding rent. I'm surprised (and encouraged!) to see so many sub-$30k folks; I had this impression that we weren't that bad; now I'm not so sure. Or maybe all the truly thrifty people have made big spenders like myself too ashamed to post.
Were are a family of two adults, one toddler (another on the way) and two cats.
Biggest expenses for 2012 were:- About $5k in utilities: gas, electricity, internet service, security system monitoring, water, landline phone (for security monitoring, cell phone is not part of this category). That includes expensive alarm system upgrades after a break-in last year. Our rental house is bigger than we need, so we pay too much to heat and cool it.
- Groceries: $7.8k. That's strictly groceries, doesn't include dining out. I haven't really been able to crack this nut. Got a Costco membership early last year, and saw the average monthly outlay go down a bit, but we're still high.
- $6k entertainment. This includes dining out, Netflix subscription, and money spent on hobbies. Most of that amount is for eating out.
- $6k vacation. About 75% of that is on one lavish trip. Unlikely to repeat such an indulgence any time soon (particularly with a baby on the way).
- $2k cell phone. Verizon's cheapest plan is still expensive, plus wife and I both got new phones last year. When this contract is up, we plan to change to one of the cheaper schemes that has been discussed here.
- Over $4k in automotive expenses (gas, insurance, maintenance, license renewal). We have two cars, but one is a backup only (intend to sell it). Half of that cost was a one-time maintenance bill on our primary car (too ashamed to say what it is, as MMM specifically ridiculed it as anti-Mustashian in one of his posts).
- Just shy of $3k in what we call "household goods". A big driver of this is diapers and baby wipes. But still, seems like we're always buying batteries, detergent, soap, toothpaste, paper towels, aspirin, etc etc.
- Nearly $2k in pets. One cat started spraying and peeing out of his litter box. So first we spent a ton of money on all kinds of medical testing, now he has not-cheap meds. Oh, and ultra-premium cat food.
The rest are a handful of sub-$1k categories.
I feel weak by MMM standards. But I rationalize it by assuming I'm doing better than the typical middle class American. No debts, and substantial savings.
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For what it's worth folks, don't feel bad about your particular spending if you're still saving a decent chunk of change. People have differing levels of comfort and happiness and differing goals.
I often see folks over at the early-retirement.org forums talk about $100k+ budgets in retirement, and that really gets my eyes rolling, but more power to them.
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Because I had to delete and re-enter my main bank accounts into mint recently, I lost all the history. All I have now is the last three months. Given that, we are averaging $8500 a month with housing (2 houses). Subtract them and I guess we're (married couple and a dog) spending ~$6250/mo, so ~$75k extrapolated over the course of the year. Really hard to estimate based on just three months of expenses when those months included two major holidays with travel and gifts though. I would expect (hope) that number to drop $1-2k in February. I guess we'll see...
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Noting that I live in Australia, where our incomes are high and our cost of living seems to match, does anyone see any glaring overly spendy categories? Any other Aussies care to post their annual spend budgets?
I'm single, so my budget will look very different to yours. I'm in Queensland' btw. Your medical and groceries seem perdy high - how many are in your family again? And presents... Other than the $5k one off for the 21st, how do you manage to buy $3k worth of other presents? Who wants that much stuff?
Groceries $2600
Social $1040
Public transport $1040 (something like 3rd most expensive city in the world for this)
Doctor + meds $580
Sport $420
Mobile $180
Spanish class + uni costs $900
Hair + clothes $500
TOTAL $7260
Clearly I'm living quite the high life :-P
Groceries are for three people, so just over $3300 per person per year. It was $15600 total last year before I found MMM and started making more meals from scratch, buying in bulk and simplifying lunches.
Yes presents are still high at $3K per year, but we only spent $500 this Xmas period on presents for everyone, including two close family's birthdays, so we seem to be tracking to at most half of that this year.
The medical costs are mostly prescription and some doctor's visit costs for one person's ailment that seem to be pretty fixed. I believe we get a tax rebate for excessive medical expenses, so the resultant figure is probably not as bad as I show.
You do live very cheaply. It would be interesting to see if you can keep it up if you ever get in a permanent relationship, as I find other spenders of my budget to be the biggest challenge in keeping costs under control. One person's badassity can be another's stingyness! I am working on them though, and slowly winning them over. It is hard to convince them when my ER income would be about 20% higher than my relatively spendy budget right now.
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Congrats to most of you - there are many impressive numbers here.
2 adults living in downtown Toronto, excluding rent we spent about 30k. That's including a 5k vacation and a 2k one-off gift to family. We tried a bit harder toward the end of the year so I expect to do a bit better this year, but I'll admit I was slightly discouraged in finding out how above-average our expenses are compared to the average couple here!
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Not including housing, if we stay in Australia to live we are looking at 36-40k pa for a family of 4. That doesn't include any international holidays, just one simple one each year. Food $200pw, phone, internet, insurances, car regos, rates, electricity, basic clothing/presents for birthdays and Christmas etc. Just a simple life, really.
If we travel the world and still don't include housing, as we will sell our paid off home and live off the interest the principal generates, our actual expenses will be around 25k pa.
It's a no brainer really...Crazy country that we live in.
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2 humans, 3 dogs, 1 cat. Gifts for 9 grandchildren. Some travel. Eat out once a month. $1,700.00/mo. or $20,400.00/yr. excluding mortgage, investments and savings.
Tracking this has been helpful in determining what we'll need in full 'retirement' in a few years.
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For what it's worth folks, don't feel bad about your particular spending if you're still saving a decent chunk of change. People have differing levels of comfort and happiness and differing goals.
+1. I spend so little primarily because, well, I ain't making much. If you have a high income and you spend a fair amount, but your savings rate is also high, then where is the problem?
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Wow, you guys are all really impressive! Thank you so much for all the responses, and keep 'em coming.
Our spending for a family of 5 (not counting housing) is about $40,000/year, so the rest of you are inspiring to me. I'm trying to reduce further, but must first hope to get spouse more in line with MMM ways (not that I couldn't also stand to cut down here and there)... Would like to get down to about $30k.
First I would have to pry the iPhone with all the nice data/voice features out of my lovely wife's cold, dead hands. And I drive to work and dropping 2 kids off at school, so there's plenty of blame to go around!
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I'm a single dude in a 1br apartment, and I'm spending about $1000-$1100 a month, so I guess if I keep that up over the year I'll be at about $12,000.
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Noting that I live in Australia, where our incomes are high and our cost of living seems to match, does anyone see any glaring overly spendy categories? Any other Aussies care to post their annual spend budgets?
Thus far I have escaped revealing the full extent of my non-mustachian sins. However Ozstache has pinned me with a direct question. Our family is 1 adult and 2 older teenagers. The teenagers account for quite a fair share and I feel mean expecting them to dramatically slash their habits because I got the retirement bug. (or as one of them says became a "money nazi - Hitler had a mustache...".) So I am weaning it down.
Enough excusitis..last year our expenses were 69k, and this year I am budgeting for 59K. Blush! I plan to keep tightening year by year until I get to a more MMM like figure.
Ozstache, your grocery budget is a relief...Last year we were @ 11k for this. I've done all sorts of things to reduce, but we have cut out takeaway and restaurant meals...so are eating more meals out of the grocery budget, which has only slightly reduced. 6 guinea pigs were eating about $1200/year of this , but I've slashed this by growing a lot of their food now.
I agree about the gifts - my gift budget turned out to be a bit over 2k when I added it all up and had a heart attack...I have reduced all gifts by at least 25% last Xmas and will be ever more selective this year.
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I live with my partner, we have one dog. Shared expenses come out at around 12k/year while individual spending, including travel comes at around 9.6k this year. This comes out at a little under 22k for last year.
This year, I am determined to keep shared + individual expenses at around 1.5k/month, which would put my expenses at 18k for 2013. Giving up cable tv and reducing restaurant budget by $100/month should help!
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We're currently in Australia. I haven't sat down and figured the amounts we'd need for varying lifestyles (i.e. "normal", "bit pinched" and "bare minimum needed"), but I can give out some very rough numbers regardless.
Rent is cheap for the area, $170/wk for a two bedroom unit. That comes at a price...I'm not sure there's any insulation anywhere (that is a bit of an exaggeration...maybe). Utility rates are higher, but we still come out ahead vs renting a "standard", more energy efficient place.
Utilities, well electric is definitely over $90/mo as that is what Dodo was charging and they just took an extra ~$150 out (not just for one month's overage, but for several). Gas on top of that, um, over $100/mo in winter, maybe $50 or so in summer? I really, really need to sit down and crunch these numbers. It was slightly easier in the US when we were all electric, and paid the actual amount used each month.
Phone and internet are $63/mo. Pretty close to what it was back in Tennessee.
Mobile phone plans are probably cheaper here. $5/mo for Crazy John's prepaid service ($15/90 days, unlimited calls/texts to other Crazy John's customers, plus 500MB of data which we never went over). But they're being phased out, so now we're on Dodo. Should still work out to nearly $5/mo (So, $10 for both phones).
Groceries, about the same. It was a money leak for a bit, we now budget $100/wk and are doing good.
Rego costs for the car and scooter are a bit high, but the scooter pays for itself (lower fuel usage plus free parking). We're becoming less dependent on the car; if it broke down and cost more to fix than it was worth, we could probably do without one. Oh, you probably want amounts...few hundred for each is probably pretty close.
The huge cost not mentioned is travel. It does cost more to go anywhere; no $30/night motels that offer a "hot" breakfast, gas (petrol) costs more, cruises cost more...well flights are halfway reasonable, so it's not all bad.
So, very very rough numbers, we could probably make do with $18k/yr whereas in Tennessee that'd be $12k/yr. Hrm, due to paying rent here vs owning in TN...that's actually pretty darn close.
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Doing a rough estimate - Mint doesn't seem to have been tracking me for a while, and I have no idea why - I come to about $13,000 per year in non-rent spending. That's as a single young woman in New Orleans. There were a couple of rather expensive surprise medical bills in there as well as a bit more travel than normal, but I think it's a pretty fair representation since there will always be some surprise. All told, based on some back of the envelope math, I'm saving about 1/4 of my income in before and after tax vehicles.
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Around $12,000/year. $6,000 for basic expenses like food, utilities, gas for the car, car and house insurances, prop and income taxes. And another $6,000 for travel, recreation, maintenance and repairs, unexpected stuff. Single kidless female with a paid off house in SoCal with no debt.
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Single guy, 36, in St. Louis suburbs. 2012 totals:
$ 4,000 Real estate taxes
$ 2,435 Dating/Relationships
$ 2,270 Household upkeep (includes $2,000 for new lawn tractor)
$ 2,000 Utilities
$ 1,870 Social outings/parties @ home/fun activities/kayak race
$ 1,663 Groceries
$ 1,224 Homeowner's/Auto insurance
$ 1,027 Gas
$ 606 Health Insurance
$ 604 Medical/health (dentist, bloodwork, haircuts)
$ 460 Family/gifts
$ 385 Cash withdrawals
$ 210 Eating out (fast food, mostly)
$ 11 Clothing (I have a big stash accumulated from prior years :) )
$18,765 Total
Excludes budgeting $200/month for eventual new car replacement in (hopefully) 6 years, and mortgage costs.
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2012 spending was $12K variable spending and about $15K regular spending (rent, bills, etc) for me and my (non-human) pet. I started reading MMM in Oct 2012 so much of 2012 passed by in spendypants mode. Hope to see it to way down for 2013.
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Excluding mortgage payments, my 2012 spending totaled $12,401.25 (single, no kids).
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Not counting rent, about 10K per year for a family of 3, including 2 international trips a year.
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Impressive numbers on here. Right around 28,250 for a family of 2 here.
7800 food
4230 cars - gas/insurance/service/tax
5000 house - tax/insurance/utilities/maintenance
3600 - travel
4800 - wife's annual fun money for not killing me for going mustachian
722 - health insurances (work subsidizes these)
2,100 - gifts/fitness/clothing/misc
It's a work in progress, but way better than the previous year already.
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Wow, I'm feeling like a huge spender after reading this. Congrats to everyone who has their spending down to MMM levels. We're...still working on it, as you'll see.
Family of 5 (plus some pets) in a major city: $60,600 or $39,300 without housing expenses
This year we're tackling the worst offenders: mobile phone bill (we cut it by 75% after switching to Ting*), dining (by packing my lunch more for work), and entertainment (by taking advantage of more free kids activities around town).
I hope to come back next year and be able to post a significantly smaller number!
* Here's a code for $50 off if you'd like to do likewise: https://z2qhtq7rd1.ting.com/ (I'll get $50 too)
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Not counting rent, about 10K per year for a family of 3, including 2 international trips a year.
Wow! That's impressive! Can you post a breakdown of your budget, please? :-)
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Just me without rent is $12,500. I want to be in the $10k-11k range for this year.
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Family of 7, excluding housing - $33,000 in 2012. I figure about 20k +/- for survival, the rest is luxury IMO.
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just me: £4000/$6000 without housing, £8900/$13500 with.
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Currently, for me and my daughter, my annual expenses come up as $86,573.
Of that, $43k is housing, and $22k is child care.
This whole thing is in flux at the moment, and probably will be for a while. I want to sell the ho use but need to work that out. Child care costs will go down once my daughter is old enough to start school, which is still a couple years out.
Not really sure why everyone is excluding housing as if that's not something that needs to be paid for.
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Not really sure why everyone is excluding housing as if that's not something that needs to be paid for.
It's because it is far more variable amongst us than other living expenses. Take me for example, with a paid off house and a housing subsidy from my employer coming in, my net housing expenses (after rates, maintenance, insurance) is actually an income of about $1000. Others may be paying though the nose for a big mortgage they have from their non-Mustachian past.
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Not really sure why everyone is excluding housing as if that's not something that needs to be paid for.
It's because it is far more variable amongst us than other living expenses. Take me for example, with a paid off house and a housing subsidy from my employer coming in, my net housing expenses (after rates, maintenance, insurance) is actually an income of about $1000. Others may be paying though the nose for a big mortgage they have from their non-Mustachian past.
I mean, I understand that, but it's a *huge* portion of expenses so it seems a bit useless to exclude it. It's literally *half* of my expenses. Reducing my housing costs by $1000/month would be a bigger difference than any other change I could possibly make, but that wouldn't even show up in this thread as affecting my budget.
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It's significantly more than half of my expenses, and i live in the Midwest! I think people are excluding housing because the OP asked for it to try and get better cross-region comparability, not because it's not incredibly significant.
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My yearly expenses come to $37,174.
Without my mortgage, it's $29,638.
And when I also remove my full time daycare costs, it's down to $20,714.
That doesn't include any of my saving or investing, just expenses.
Edited to add: This for myself and my small fry. Also, $4,918 of that is designated for home maintenance, travel, fun, and my hobby.
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Last year my husband and I spent about 32k if you don't count our (tiny) mortgage. This included $6000 for our wedding and about $5000 for our honeymoon. I'm excited to see how things look during a "normal" year, and now that we are really buckling down and paying attention.
Beautiful! I am a single male, so maybe this will change when it comes time for my wedding, but wedding expenses are outrageous. My sister got married a few months back, and I think the final cost was between 30-50K!
That's 3-5 years expenses!
Yeah that's just ridiculous. We spent 3-5k on our honeymoon but her parents spent less than 10k on the entire wedding. One thing to keep in mind is that most of those wedding price quotes are negotiable.
Our monthly expenses minus rent are as follows:
Books (my wife is getting her masters) 75
Clothing 50
Transportation (she has to commute to campus + we're saving for a used car because both of ours are burning out 120K+ mileage) 283
Gifts (we have a huge extended family) 100
Insurance Costs:
wife car Insurance 42.4
my car Insurance 34.77
both life insurance 31.76
Renter's insurance 10.83
Utilities Costs:
Internet 32.49
Electricity 70
Water/Trash 35
Other Expenses:
Food 250
NetFlix 7.99
Fun Money (50 each) 100
Phones 38
Sunday papers 0
Wife's Health insurance 110
Transportation Costs:
My Gas 25
Her Gas 175
Education Costs:
My college loans 269
Total per month = 1665.24
Total per year = 19982.88
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I'm pretty new to watching my actual spending, so I don't have a long standing average. However, my monthly *budget* is as follows. After say 6 more months I'll be able to say for certain if another category needs to be added. I'd probably add $500 for safe measure for the yearly budget, which would cover other costs like clothes, unexpected costs associated with driving and biking.
Auto Insurance 58
Gas, Maintenance 100
Mobile Phone 10
Dr. (Chiropractor) 20
Books (Uni) 20
Total Monthly 208
Yearly 2496
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Huh, I'm not really sure what our annual budget is. Higher than I'd like for sure.
Daycare and after school care alone is $16k for two kids (one school aged child and one infant).
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Working backwards from our income minus savings minus taxes minus mortgage, we must total about $30k/year for a family of five.
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Sunday papers 0
Was this a typo? Or is this an item you keep at zero just to remind yourself what you're not spending money on it? If the latter, I do that in my budget too! Just a little monthly pat on the back to remind myself what I used to spend money on but now don't.
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Rent (included heat/water) - $8,340
Other Living Expenses - $11,796
Looking back over the past few years worth of data, the other living expenses has remained about the same. The housing changed quite a bit as I owned an OLD house with all of the associated repairs until last fall. Now I'm enjoying the leisure and cash flow of renting.
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If you have a high income and you spend a fair amount, but your savings rate is also high, then where is the problem?
The "years to retirement" calculators work out the same for the same savings percentages. For example, the guy saving $8k of his $10k income, and the gal saving $80k of her $100k income have the same number of working years until retirement.
However, even though the numbers are the same, I feel there is much more risk for the person with the bigger spend. If the retiree comes up short---unexpected dramatic expense increase and/or prolonged low portfolio returns---then making up the difference is harder with the greater the expenses. Particularly for those of us with families, I think there is a particular risk that expenses can rise unexpectedly.
I think MMM is a good example: his investment portfolio can cover his living expenses. But he has income from "hobby jobs" (landlording and carpentry) that actually covers his cost of living, so he's not drawing on his portfolio. But his family's expenses are low enough (sub $30k) that they aren't terribly hard to cover working part time as he does.
Now, hypothetically, let's double MMM's portfolio and spending. He's still retired by his definition (investments cover expenses). But, if he wants to cover his expenses with his for-fun-retirement-jobs, he needs to work twice as much. And at that point, would they still be "for fun"?
I assume MMM himself wouldn't sweat it in this hypothetical case. But I would. I don't share his optimism that that an investment portfolio built around a 4% SWR would sustain a very young person (<40 years old) plus family indefinitely. Too many unknowns over too long a time period. So for my personality and temperment, I'm looking at an indefinite period of "semi" retirement. For me, this means I still expect to work just enough to cover my expenses, and let my portfolio grow naturally. The catch is, I think of "semi retirement" as a continuum, with truly doing absolutely no paid work on one end, and typical full-time employment on the other. How big your expenses are determine where you fall on that continuum. So for example, covering $10k/year is quite easy with part time work, minimum wage jobs, etc. Versus covering say $50k/year of expenses: that probably requires full-time work, or a really choice part-time gig.
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$10000 is almost full time at a minimum wage job after taxes. At $6/hr, you'd be looking at 1600 hours or 32/week.
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Waiting to get face punched here. I've *never* done a real budget. I just make a point to always spend less than I make per pay period. Closest I ever got was when I quit my job and then took up flying airplanes. After a couple months of rapidly depleting savings I went and got another job. :-) Less than half what I had been making before, but was able to keep flying and build a nice road bike, and just about break even for the year.
I then spent less until I got a higher paid job, then got married (that's about break even, while she's been working so far, the costs she brings pretty much equal her salary). Now I spend a little more than I did back then overall, but am still able to make some nice savings. At least until her job gets outsourced in another couple of months. Then we're looking at decreased savings. I promise to start at least tracking all our expenses (instead of just eyeballing the income/outgo differences), if not making an actual budget! :-)
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I'm pretty new to watching my actual spending, so I don't have a long standing average. However, my monthly *budget* is as follows. After say 6 more months I'll be able to say for certain if another category needs to be added. I'd probably add $500 for safe measure for the yearly budget, which would cover other costs like clothes, unexpected costs associated with driving and biking.
Auto Insurance 58
Gas, Maintenance 100
Mobile Phone 10
Dr. (Chiropractor) 20
Books (Uni) 20
Total Monthly 208
Yearly 2496
What do you spend on food? Thanks!
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$10000 is almost full time at a minimum wage job after taxes. At $6/hr, you'd be looking at 1600 hours or 32/week.
Minimum wage is up to $7.25 now, so that improves it a bit.
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But you're going to be paying local income taxes and making your FICA contributions even if you pay no state or federal income tax, which brings it down a bit.
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My finances are a little different - have common law spouse but we keep finances separate. I spend 22,685 including property taxes and utilities on home which were about $5700, so excluding home expenses around $17,000. I also spent $2400 on vacations last year and about $1000 on some home maintenance stuff. Wife then gives me $ every month to help pay for that stuff + cable, etc. She is slowly converting to MMM and hopefully one day she will track expenses too, but she is likely around $15,000 per year (not including the $ to me). I-phone plan is horrid - that is likely $1200 a year on it's own for her.
Goal is to be under $20K each year excluding car depreciation, home maintenance and vacations.
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Sad to say we do not really budget at all. Spend about 36-40 k in a year for the two of us and 3 cats. Pretty spendypants but we are working on it. Not super spendypants as a % of our income though as our savings rate is over %50. Our single largest expense is taxes in all their various evil forms by a factor of about 3.
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Sad to say we do not really budget at all. Spend about 36-40 k in a year for the two of us and 3 cats. Pretty spendypants but we are working on it. Not super spendypants as a % of our income though as our savings rate is over %50. Our single largest expense is taxes in all their various evil forms by a factor of about 3.
MMM doesn't use or recommend a budget, so you're fine. I don't use a budget either (although I think it can really benefit many people). I use an excel sheet and write down every single expenditure after first reviewing the purchase relentlessly.
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I'm pretty new to watching my actual spending, so I don't have a long standing average. However, my monthly *budget* is as follows. After say 6 more months I'll be able to say for certain if another category needs to be added. I'd probably add $500 for safe measure for the yearly budget, which would cover other costs like clothes, unexpected costs associated with driving and biking.
Auto Insurance 58
Gas, Maintenance 100
Mobile Phone 10
Dr. (Chiropractor) 20
Books (Uni) 20
Total Monthly 208
Yearly 2496
What do you spend on food? Thanks!
I live at home and my parents pay for food. So I brown bag everything.
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Two people 1 pet - just under $23,000 p/a - this includes child care every school holidays
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We don't have a budget per se...rather we constantly compete to lower all spending categories month by month; year by year. More like...we adopt a rolling 'Annual' indicator of savings. At the present time we're just under $35,000 annual. As at September we will be largely eliminating daycare. This has been a major expense for us; although a necessary one. Annual daycare is around $6500. Thus; our 'Annual' budget will become $29,000 as of September.
When we dropped cable and reduced the overhead on all other electronic 'needs' last year it shaved $1200 off our 'Annual' budget.
We find it to be more exciting and motivating to do it this way.
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Single and 25.
My yearly spending should be around $10k without my mortgage/house expenses (give or take $500). However, I've been doing lots of home renovations to the tune of about $9000 and someone crashed into my truck and I was faulted so I regrettably paid ~$8k to fix it (still in court trying to recoup some of this).
Total: ~$27k
Total cost of living: ~$10k
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Removing the housing costs results in $9,000 living expenses for me. Since I am single, I do date which adds to the budget. I also visit family so I rotate paying for the family meals. If I stopped dating and paying to eat out with loved ones, my annual expenses would drop to $4,200/year and my savings rate would rise to close to 80%. It is all about maintaining balance so I choose to spend time with loved ones and I feel it is time and money, well spent.
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Just under 24K per year for my family of 3.5- 2 parents, 1 toddler, 1 on the way.
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Just starting my first budget this year. So far based on our expenses it appears that $25k should be our typical, even with our expensive hobbies and occasional house/car repairs figured in. Last couple of years were (back of the envelope calculations) about twice that due to some planned upgrades that got much more expensive than expected as well as some extra schooling/training.
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Married, both grad students with a child and cat and we budget around $33K without the mortgage, 30K without property taxes and insurance.
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There are three of us, plus a step-daughter we have every other weekend and pay cs for. Our budget, not including the mortgage or longer-term savings is $26,000 a year.
But, once CS is over (1 year left!), this will drop to $20,000 a year. This amount does not include larger renovation projects or trips, which I currently fund entirely out of side-gig income, and the amount spent on them varies year to year. In order to more than cover these larger irregular costs, we are planning on a retirement budget of $25k/year.
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Just skimming here, but I didn't see anyone else list big medical costs. We're on track to spend about $38k this year (no mortgage, but including insurance, etc. for the house). Of that, about $14k is budgeted for medical - $12k for unsubsidized premiums, and the rest for office visits/Rx/lab work. Early 50's, currently retired.
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Just skimming here, but I didn't see anyone else list big medical costs.
We just don't ever have any so far. Only in our 40's. Expect that to pick up in the next decade or so, but other expenses should drop a little bit as well. If our insurance situation stays the same it should all balance out.
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Just skimming here, but I didn't see anyone else list big medical costs. We're on track to spend about $38k this year (no mortgage, but including insurance, etc. for the house). Of that, about $14k is budgeted for medical - $12k for unsubsidized premiums, and the rest for office visits/Rx/lab work. Early 50's, currently retired.
We have pretty low co-pays that are all more than covered by our FSA contribution of $50/mo. And while this may increase (I'm only 33), our family out of pocket yearly max is currently $5k, so shouldn't be much higher than that.
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$47k last year for 2, shooting for $36k this year. Just don't ask to see my food budget...(hint: my housing expenses, but not the mortgage alone, just barely beat it out last year for the #1 expense slot). Let's just say its a work in progress.
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Single + dog. Expenses are about $9,000/yr. Health Insurance is paid by employer though.
Wowwee! :D Do you have a blog we can follow? EDIT: Nevermind, found your case study!
(http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/reader-case-study-buy-a-house-or-save-more/ (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/reader-case-study-buy-a-house-or-save-more/))
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Just skimming here, but I didn't see anyone else list big medical costs. We're on track to spend about $38k this year (no mortgage, but including insurance, etc. for the house). Of that, about $14k is budgeted for medical - $12k for unsubsidized premiums, and the rest for office visits/Rx/lab work. Early 50's, currently retired.
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We're in our late twenties but that means we're in peak childbearing / kids-go-to-the-ER a lot age. We budget 7500/yr (our family out of packet max) into our 24K total budget (w/o housing). I'm hoping our costs will even out as we age but our kids move off our plan- but medical expenses are a huge and scary unknown for us in the far future. We are in the individual insurance market (we are obamacare! Lol) so we don't have any guarantees for future coverage, etc so it's definitely a big question mark!
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Removing housing. Not including my life partner. Therefore, single female with one cat and one dog.
$11,670
This includes:
One medical issue ($585)
One vacation($465)
One iPad purchase ($900)
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$36,000/year, not including housing cost. Travelling and home repair/renos run this number up.
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$14000 removing housing and health insurance
$18000 adding health insurance
$28000 adding housing
Family of four - DW + 2 year old + 6 month old
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Another spendypants here! We are at $26,341.28 so far, just for these first five months of the year, excluding housing. We are a household of two adults, three teenagers, and a small dog. We have had a TON of car repairs (with more to come...) and my husband's daily commute is 240 miles round-trip. If both of those things can be resolved, we'll do much better!
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Another spendypants here! We are at $26,341.28 so far, just for these first five months of the year, excluding housing. We are a household of two adults, three teenagers, and a small dog. We have had a TON of car repairs (with more to come...) and my husband's daily commute is 240 miles round-trip. If both of those things can be resolved, we'll do much better!
240 miles round trip!! Holy crap! My husband did 180 round trip a couple times a week for two years... It was awful.
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We don't have a budget per se...rather we constantly compete to lower all spending categories month by month; year by year. More like...we adopt a rolling 'Annual' indicator of savings. At the present time we're just under $35,000 annual. As at September we will be largely eliminating daycare. This has been a major expense for us; although a necessary one. Annual daycare is around $6500. Thus; our 'Annual' budget will become $29,000 as of September.
When we dropped cable and reduced the overhead on all other electronic 'needs' last year it shaved $1200 off our 'Annual' budget.
We find it to be more exciting and motivating to do it this way.
Well...our annual spending has only gone down to $33,000 as of the end of May. We need to find some more savings. Our groceries bill has really gone up...we're not sure why. This month was $700 - facepunch! Over the last year...we've gone from an average of $500 to almost $700 this year. Our kid is getting bigger and eating more...but jeez.
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Annual expenses (just for myself) amount to ~$19,000, which includes everything- all insurances (health, LTC, auto, RV and umbrella), housing costs (lot rent for my paid-for RV, electric bill), food and incidentals, fuel for paid-for pickup truck, vehicle/RV maintenance, business expenses, storage unit cost, phone/internet, clothing and recreation/fun money. Expenses = 32% of take-home income. 68% of my income is invested towards my FI.
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Single without pets. At the beginning of the year I budgeted for $6,000, but it looks like I will be closer to $7,500 due to a vacation and poor spending haibts in January. Health/dental/vision are covered by my employer and I don't own a car, which likely helps quite a bit.
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For one person with a dog - ~2k per month or 24k per year, including my half of rent (I live with my partner but only track my own expenses). This year has a trip to France included though!
I think I could do better. I am just beginning my Mustachian journey...