You were right--ours expenses look quite similar only no housekeeper or gym & more $$ on kids activities (lessons, tutoring (almost done with that) & party gifts). We pay Life insur on both of us plus LT disability on just DH which is a bit more than you pay total.
OK. I still think you should be able to pay for both kids' childcare out of your monthly takehome without using up your $15,000 in savings.
You have $2,000 extra each month even after all those variable categories. Even if we leave a $1,000 "slush/no idea" fund, wouldn't $2100 cover the lower price of Lu's preschool and the baby?
Do you mind saying what your gross income is if it isn't too personal for you?
Around $140k.
Things that help:
--Our health insurance is fully paid for by work --My work gives you around 1,000/month for insurance. If you don't use it all (I do not) the balance goes to your 403b. So between that and their automatic 8% contribution, I am practically at 15% without having to spend any money. DH's eomplyer also contributes generously to retirement.
--We have no state income tax
--Mortgage interest deduction. We will be seriously feeling it if that goes away.
As a note, we both withhold at the single rate and have gotten back around $1,000 the past couple of years come tax time.
This is awesome.
So what about things like hair, clothes, gifts, lawn care, house stuff? (excess money?)
We need to be better about saving for particular things like vacation, christmas, etc. Because what tends to happen is that we'll put that stuff on a card, pay it the next month (which means no savings that month) and then something random comes up like needing $1000 of car repairs or whatever. So even though it feels like we should have a lot of "slush" in practicality we're dicking a lot away.
This is something I'm working on getting better at right now. I've got ING sub-accounts set up for a bunch of different things (vacation, car repairs, house repairs, gifts/Christmas), and I set up automatic transfers each month. I still put everything on a CC, but when I'm paying the CC bill, I do a quick scan and pull anything out that isn't a normal monthly expense - so this month, we had $X on the CC related to Christmas, and I pulled that money from the Christmas fund to pay for it. It's a bit more work but not too painful, I find.
For us, the two things that were hurting the most were car repairs and unexpected gift occasions like weddings - having three weddings in one month this year really set back our savings for that month.
I started doing this too, mostly just for travel, taxes and some other annual expenses. I've found that if I actually make a line item and transfer the money every month, it is much easier than trying to cash-flow things whenever they come up. Shocking, I know, but for some reason, on paper there would be extra cash but then it was never there when the expense came up.
We need to be better about saving for particular things like vacation, christmas, etc. Because what tends to happen is that we'll put that stuff on a card, pay it the next month (which means no savings that month) and then something random comes up like needing $1000 of car repairs or whatever. So even though it feels like we should have a lot of "slush" in practicality we're dicking a lot away.
This is something I'm working on getting better at right now. I've got ING sub-accounts set up for a bunch of different things (vacation, car repairs, house repairs, gifts/Christmas), and I set up automatic transfers each month. I still put everything on a CC, but when I'm paying the CC bill, I do a quick scan and pull anything out that isn't a normal monthly expense - so this month, we had $X on the CC related to Christmas, and I pulled that money from the Christmas fund to pay for it. It's a bit more work but not too painful, I find.
For us, the two things that were hurting the most were car repairs and unexpected gift occasions like weddings - having three weddings in one month this year really set back our savings for that month.
This sub-accounting thing looks interesting. I am going to look into it because I will say that we are going to save xx for a tv or vacation or whatever, but then it all goes into a general savings and then I don't ever want to touch it, lol.
I have about 7 savings accounts (not counting our normal Wells Fargo one thats attached to checking)all through USAA & deposit via transfers. I have 1 for each girl, vacation, rental, home improvement & E-fund. It's nice but the good/bad part is that deposits take 2-3 days to clear. I do have ATM cards for each so I can withdraw some immediately if need be.
I mostly lurk, but have learned quite a bit from everyone here.
We're in savings mode for an international adoption & huge house remodel, so it's helpful to hear others' ideas on how to save, maximize money, paying off items, etc
As for vehicles jenny, i think you're safe - i drive a 99 accord with 275K miles on it & it's running perfectly
I assume your cars are paid off? Are they in good shape? Do you have a new car fund?
Everything looks pretty good! I am envious of your amount of slush. I should post my budget next.
Yes, both cars are paid off. We have a 2003 civic and a 2004 CR-V. Both are in good shape and we just had each tuned up this summer.
We should probably start a car savings account as we'll eventually need to replace. But, neither of us are "car people" and plan to drive them into the ground. I am hoping since they're Hondas they've got some good years left.
Total sidebar: Jenny will you send your kids to private school the whole way? Or how did Lucy end up in a Catholic Pre school? I've generally thought that Washington has a pretty solid public education system.
We've been batting around moving from Montana for better career opportunities. We have discussed that a pro for moving home to Washington is good schools. Moving to Idaho we'd probably opt for private school.
Do you mind saying what your gross income is if it isn't too personal for you?
Around $140k.
Things that help:
--Our health insurance is fully paid for by work
--My work gives you around 1,000/month for insurance. If you don't use it all (I do not) the balance goes to your 403b. So between that and their automatic 8% contribution, I am practically at 15% without having to spend any money. DH's eomplyer also contributes generously to retirement.
--We have no state income tax
--Mortgage interest deduction. We will be seriously feeling it if that goes away.
As a note, we both withhold at the single rate and have gotten back around $1,000 the past couple of years come tax time.
I'm not sure if I want to cry or throw up. Our gross is a bit higher than yours and our take home is $2k/mo less.
Post by asoctoberfalls on Dec 19, 2012 17:14:23 GMT -5
Ditto on the "grossing around the same but taking home >2k less than you"! But, we pay quite a bit for health insurance and our state and local income taxes are ~7k per year. No one believes me when I say Ohio is a high tax state, but it's true!! Property taxes aren't dirt cheap to make up for it, either... about 4k/year on a 150k house.
Ditto on the "grossing around the same but taking home >2k less than you"! But, we pay quite a bit for health insurance and our state and local income taxes are ~7k per year. No one believes me when I say Ohio is a high tax state, but it's true!! Property taxes aren't dirt cheap to make up for it, either... about 4k/year on a 150k house.
We pay just under $7k on a TH. IloveNJIloveNJIloveNJ!