Edit: To anyone else willing to help analyze my expenses. What I'm really looking for now after getting some good advice is: if you were me how would you get this spending down to the magical 25k-30k range that MMM seems to tout so much as a reasonable level of spending?
Hi,
I would really appreciate your advice on where my family should focus on
cost reduction. I'll give you some context so you know how harshly to judge the numbers!
We are a mid-20's, married couple living in suburban Georgia. I am employed as a software
developer for a major corporation and I make approximately 70k salary. My spouse is currently
still in college, but holds a part time job that nets about 10k per year.
We own a house at a low interest rate with a cheap mortgage. We have two cars that are
fully paid off and are each 10+ years old. I live 20 miles from my work in downtown Atlanta.
My spouse is about 8 miles from the university.
We have no debt except for our mortgage. All that said, here's the numbers.
That's 6 months of spending because the 6 months before isn't accurate. Just double these figures for annual amounts.
Right off the bat 46k spending dismays me, but I need help figuring our where we are spending too much.
Here's a breakdown of our three biggest expense categories:
Some notes on this spending: I've identified the auto as high, which is why I negotiated to work from home 4 days per
week. This will allow me to sell my car.
The mobile phone category is so high because I paid $300 to cancel my ATT contract (previously $91/mo) and then $275
to join Republic Wireless. My spouse is still on a $45/mo iphone plan.
Our "credit card" category is deceiving because we have never paid any interest. My spouse runs gas and some shopping
through that card for reward points only. Our intention is to have just $100 per person per month of "fun money".
Again, I appreciate your help. Sorry for the extra long post. Feel free to follow up with questions on the details.