Thanks...and yes, I'm blushing with stupidity/embarassment! I grew up on a farm, with good examples of frugal/content living from my parents/grandparents vs. the always striving/working 'adults' here in NYC - this feedback from you with that foundation is exactly what I need to hear to get our house in order...and get hubby on board.
We weren't tracking spending til early this year, so while we are late to the game, I was relieved it wasn't worse, frankly. Now I have YNAB and you MMM'ers and I think we'll figure it out.
A few answers:
- Baby...not sure, diapers, a few toys...maybe some mis-allocated Amazon orders. I'll dig in.
- Food...budget will be paid attention to and cut. Hadn't really thought about it as $2k/mo - thank you Starbuk for pointing that out. Sometimes I gloss over basic addition.
- Wine...Some of the wine was for parties, other was higher priced, and we have a stockpile/fridge..can be limited for sure.
- Electricity...it is insane. We live in a rental apartment building with electric heat, stove, and big windows. Very non-energy efficient but with a newborn at home there wasn't much we could do in the winter. It actually was as high as $600/mo, the $300 is an annual average.
- Commute...ShoulderThingThatGoesUp - you make a great point. I would love to live elsewhere but the commute would be killer, and we aren't sure that we could get jobs elsewhere (industries are focused here; would both need major career changes) so I'm thinking adopting MMM tenets is a better route for us as we may be silly spenders but we actually aren't interested in labels/etc.
- Clothing...he needs dress clothes, I needed different sizes during/post pregnancy. Should be lower again.
And thank you WaltWorks for pointing out that the savings is pretty pathetic, and for the good feedback on other categories/target savings. I think I have some shopping for cell phones / cutting of bills to do!