Author Topic: What Is Your Annual Budget?  (Read 48221 times)

StaceStache

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #50 on: February 13, 2013, 02:45:22 PM »
Roughly 20K for 2 adults and 2 kitties :-)

freelancerNfulltimer

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #51 on: February 13, 2013, 03:02:54 PM »
$23k, but that includes $5000/year for keeping my horse.

Mrs WW

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #52 on: February 13, 2013, 03:11:34 PM »
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.

Crash87

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #53 on: February 13, 2013, 04:43:30 PM »
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

Ozstache

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #54 on: February 14, 2013, 03:19:16 AM »
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?

martynthewolf

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #55 on: February 14, 2013, 03:45:37 AM »
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
« Last Edit: February 14, 2013, 03:48:09 AM by martynthewolf »

keith

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #56 on: February 14, 2013, 04:09:08 AM »
Single, late 20's.

2012 total expenses including rent $23k, excluding rent would be around $14-$15k

Hoping to hit around $20k this year.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2013, 04:11:44 AM by keith »

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #57 on: February 14, 2013, 04:51:33 AM »
~$25k for a family of 4.

Nudelkopf

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #58 on: February 14, 2013, 05:40:11 AM »
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

starbuck

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #59 on: February 14, 2013, 07:15:10 AM »
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.

WageSlave

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #60 on: February 14, 2013, 10:48:19 AM »
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.

lauren_knows

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #61 on: February 14, 2013, 10:58:46 AM »
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.

adam

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #62 on: February 14, 2013, 12:55:41 PM »
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...

Ozstache

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #63 on: February 14, 2013, 01:23:40 PM »
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.

aclarridge

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #64 on: February 14, 2013, 01:33:50 PM »
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!

travelbug

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #65 on: February 14, 2013, 03:21:28 PM »
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.

Miamoo

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #66 on: February 15, 2013, 12:18:40 PM »
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.

anastrophe

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #67 on: February 15, 2013, 02:06:59 PM »
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?

DoubleDown

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #68 on: February 15, 2013, 02:32:56 PM »
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!

Kriegsspiel

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #69 on: February 15, 2013, 04:43:00 PM »
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.

happy

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #70 on: February 15, 2013, 11:07:05 PM »
Quote
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.

mm31

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #71 on: February 16, 2013, 12:51:29 AM »
 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!

NumberJohnny5

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #72 on: February 16, 2013, 02:17:22 AM »
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.

nolajo

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #73 on: February 17, 2013, 09:06:57 AM »
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.

Spartana

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #74 on: February 17, 2013, 01:06:15 PM »
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.

MooreBonds

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #75 on: February 17, 2013, 01:59:40 PM »
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.

Miss Stachio

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #76 on: February 17, 2013, 04:56:12 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2013, 10:36:35 PM by Miss Stachio »

Mike

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #77 on: February 18, 2013, 03:58:45 AM »
Excluding mortgage payments, my 2012 spending totaled $12,401.25 (single, no kids).

pka222

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #78 on: February 18, 2013, 05:23:18 AM »
Not counting rent, about 10K per year for a family of 3, including 2 international trips a year. 

Matt F

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #79 on: February 18, 2013, 10:59:36 AM »
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.

yolfer

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #80 on: February 18, 2013, 02:41:46 PM »
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)

Nudelkopf

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #81 on: February 18, 2013, 05:39:52 PM »
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? :-)

camarijm

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #82 on: February 18, 2013, 06:29:08 PM »
Just me without rent is $12,500. I want to be in the $10k-11k range for this year.

Workin' Man

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #83 on: February 26, 2013, 02:21:58 PM »
Family of 7, excluding housing - $33,000 in 2012.  I figure about 20k +/- for survival, the rest is luxury IMO.

kt

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #84 on: February 26, 2013, 03:25:47 PM »
just me: £4000/$6000 without housing, £8900/$13500 with.

tkaraszewski

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #85 on: February 26, 2013, 04:01:49 PM »
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.

Ozstache

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #86 on: February 26, 2013, 04:56:57 PM »
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.

tkaraszewski

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #87 on: February 26, 2013, 05:01:20 PM »
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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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #88 on: February 26, 2013, 05:19:46 PM »
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.

KulshanGirl

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #89 on: February 26, 2013, 05:21:53 PM »
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.   
« Last Edit: February 26, 2013, 05:30:59 PM by KulshanGirl »

Guitarguy

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #90 on: February 26, 2013, 08:33:48 PM »
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

JamesL

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #91 on: February 26, 2013, 09:15:32 PM »
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


mm1970

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #92 on: February 26, 2013, 09:16:54 PM »
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).

sol

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #93 on: February 26, 2013, 11:34:37 PM »
Working backwards from our income minus savings minus taxes minus mortgage, we must total about $30k/year for a family of five.

yolfer

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #94 on: February 27, 2013, 11:48:40 AM »
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.

anotherAlias

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #95 on: February 27, 2013, 12:40:28 PM »
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.

WageSlave

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #96 on: February 27, 2013, 12:42:17 PM »
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.


grantmeaname

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #97 on: February 27, 2013, 02:07:26 PM »
$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.

BlueMR2

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #98 on: February 27, 2013, 05:14:03 PM »
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!  :-)

William

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Re: What Is Your Annual Budget?
« Reply #99 on: February 27, 2013, 06:21:26 PM »
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!