Hi Acroy -
I am really impressed with your ability to save so much with so many kids. I hope to have 4 kids someday and I was hoping you could share you budget with us if you ever get the chance. I think I could learn a lot from you.
Thanks,
Brian
Thanks for the interest; Kids are the BEST investment you'll ever make! Seriously, they are a friggin blast.
Honestly we don’t ‘budget’ so much as make sure we ‘watch the pennies’. Then the dollars take care of themselves! I audit the finances occasionally to identify any clowny behavior...
The monthly expenditures are something like:
House (incl property tax) $1k
Car & house insurance (very high deductibles, paid yearly to get a discount): $110
Gas: $100
‘groceries’ (food, toiletries, etc) $700
Clothes $50 or less
Pre-tax health insurance: $224
Utilities (gas, water, electric, trash) $150 winter $350 summer
Phone: $55 (2 cells, coming down)
Internet $40 (cheapest we can get)
Fast food $25 (occasional treat pizza or Sonic)
-Kids really are not all that expensive if you’re smart about it
-PB&J’s are cheap, filling, nutritious.
-We go through 5doz eggs a week.
-Ms Baird’s Bread store baby! Bread freezes & defrosts just fine
-rice, potatoes, beans are cheap & awesome when cooked up different ways with spices & veggies
-Clothes are almost 100% thrift store buys, and handed down kid-to-kid. Shoes generally don’t make it….
-we homeschool, supplies run around $300/yr. This could be less if we did not buy ‘real’ books
-We clean the house out once a quarter and truck it to Goodwill, take the tax break. Unused clothes, toys, etc get recycled at close to net zero cost
Uncle Sam gives you $1k/yr/kid, which just about pays for the little ankle-biters.
Not included are things like car tires, vacations, home improvements, clown purchases like the $1600 projector I bought on Cyber Monday (facepalm)
We have found that investing in our comfort and entertainment at home really lessens the temptation to go out & spend excess $$. Well-researched, rather large purchases which we can
really enjoy for years and years. To that end we have:
-moderate size efficient house that is fairly cheap to heat & cool to reasonable levels (80 summer/65 winter)
- big yard & big pool (awesome in the HOT summers!)
-home theatre setup ($7k total investment over 10yrs)
It’s worked well thus far!