FIRE s/o- HCOL bare bones expenses

[mommin]

Just out of curiosity, and for reference for others, if you are in a HCOL area and you had to go bare bones, what would your monthly expenses total? If you feel like itemizing, you’re welcome to but I thought the total would at least be interesting to some.

We are a family of six but they are all school-aged. Our bare bones expenses are about $10k. If we were in a position to get SNAP benefits it would be closer to $9k. This includes mortgage PITI, car insurance, phones, internet, public school fees, gas/electric, car gas, trash/sewer/city landscape fees, food, inexpensive kids clothes and shoes, dog food, home necessities, and incidentals.

[steamboat185]

Family of 4 low end of HCOL (Denver proper). We just paid off our mortgage and if we cut out vacations and some extra spending we’d be at around 6k. If we cut out the kids activities and all the small stuff we’d be at about 5200. Our cars are pretty old 20 years and 10 so we always a bit wary of those.
Edit
I said we paid off the mortgage, but left the amount in the totals by mistake. We’d need about 4K and 3200.

[wanderingback]

Rent - $5300
Mortgage (in another city that's not HCOL) - $1710
Daycare (we've been using a part time nanny cause my partner has flexible schedule, but starting daycare in the fall when she's close to 1) - $3100
Student loans - they've been on pause for so long and my income has increased so much, so don't know exactly how much, but would guess - $1000 (was previously $580)
Transit pass - $127
Internet - $150 (I think)
Cell phones - $180

Total - $11,567
So I would say those are the bare bones expenses we'd have to cover if shit hit the fan and that's all we could pay for.

[sadlebred]

Wow! I believe it. I know what my bare bones budget is in a MCOL major city suburb. I can't imagine trying to feed kids and such!

[winemaker06]

I hadn’t calculated this in a while!
Our family of 4 would be about $6,200 in the DC/MD/VA suburbs. $3,000 of that is PITI, and the rest is not taking into account summer camps and expensive kid things. I assume that if we need to use a budget like this that someone isn’t working, so kids can be stuck at home with them.

[egishere]

Denver suburbs; Family of 5

Ours is around $6,500 for mortgage, one car, bills: water/electric/internet/YouTube TV, car insurance, cell phones and food. This doesn't include any extras like clothing, kid activities, dry cleaning, eating out etc.

[aprilsails]

I'm in a MHCOL in Canada

Our bare bones budget is now just $4850 for a family of four. That would cover mortgage and PITI, utilities, food, and our monthly gas usage. We own our cars and they are in good condition so minimal maintenance. This would not cover @@@related expenses such as activities and daycare since we wouldn't be using them.

[fortnightlily]

Family of three in a HCOL (also DC/MD/VA burbs). I think our barebones discretionary expenses are probably around $5,500/mo. But if one of us weren't working and had to get all on the other's health insurance I'm not sure how much expense that would add. Our cars are paid off and we both WFH since Covid so that helps a lot. Our only debt is the mortgage, we don't have credit card debt or student loans to worry about so that helps a lot too. We also spend excessively on food so I'm not sure how to calculate what a reasonable food budget would be if we actually had to stick to one.

[SusanBAnthony]

MCOL so not answering the actual question. Family of 4, kids are teens.

About 4000$ if we cut literally everything and had no medical bills. But that includes health insurance being paid out of my paycheck, so actually 4500ish. And then realistically we will have medical bills, so let's say 5000$.

A more likely scenario of one of us losing our jobs but still having some income, I think we would cut to ~6k a month.

[wildrice]

I think we'd be ok on around $4500, which includes a 1k a month student loan payment so I guess if we were really desperate there is probably a way we could cut that down or pause it. There are only two of us and we primarily work from home so our vehicle expenses are minimal - we have one paid off, shared car. No other debt other than mortgage, so most of the rest is food and other incidentals, utilities, etc. I guess realistically we could go even a bit lower if we really needed to, but I don't really know how to calculate that.

We are in the Baltimore/DC area so would say we are on the low end of HCOL.

[heygrey]

~$4000 for a family of 3.

Our current monthly expenses are only $4500. I could tighten up the grocery and misc. spending a bit and drop a couple streaming services, but none of our major expenses would change. We're in a sweet spot with no car payments, almost no kid expenses, and a mortgage that is less than half the average in our area.

[waverly]

Probably around 6500.

[jewel]

We’re in a lower HCOL area (suburb in CA).

Bare bones would be around $5000, maybe less depending on how bare bones we needed to be. However, the primary reason it’s so low is that we lucked into the housing market in 2010 when prices were super low, and refinanced during Covid at 1.99%. If we were to buy our house now at the current price and rate, our mortgage would easily be 3 times what we pay now. Same for our car that was purchased right before Covid. Neither of us had student loans and I don’t work so no daycare.

For the most part, we’ve just lucked into being comfortable in a relatively HCOL area. Another family in the area could easily be over $10k/mo in bare bones expenses right now.

[krystee]

I think we’d be at $7,500. Family of 4 in the Chicago are, so probably more upper medium cost of living.

[chpmnk1015]

Nnj area and ballpark bare bones and we only have a mortgage, no car loan, but factoring in insurance, groceries (and I'd go to like pasta and cheap meals), health insurance, prob 8500.

[agnes]

roughly $3k - we'd have to cut back on food, gas, and get rid of H's Harley and SUV

[wanderingback]

Jul 1, 2023 20:42:54 GMT -5 agnes said:

roughly $3k - we'd have to cut back on food, gas, and get rid of H's Harley and SUV

Whoa! Do you not have a mortgage or rent or do you live in a studio apartment? Even then studio apartments in HCOL can be 3k!

[agnes]

Jul 1, 2023 21:35:59 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Jul 1, 2023 20:42:54 GMT -5 agnes said:

roughly $3k - we'd have to cut back on food, gas, and get rid of H's Harley and SUV

Whoa! Do you not have a mortgage or rent or do you live in a studio apartment? Even then studio apartments in HCOL can be 3k!

we bought a small 1bd townhouse in 2016 with low HOA (for the area) and have refied down to 2.6%. our PITI and HOA is only $1800.

You’re right though. We can’t even rent a studio for that.

[bee20]

Similar to agnes, I live in a HCOL area but was able to buy several years ago and stay put, if I bought today my mortgage payment would be higher than my total expenses. Also don't have kids. I think I could get it down to about $3.2k, lower if I got lucky with medical costs.

[simpsongal]

Hmmm, that's tough to calculate - our regular monthly spending for a family of 4 in Northern VA is $12-15K/month. We could probably get that down to $8K with lots of cuts (activities are $$$$). PITI is almost $3700/mo and we bought 11 years ago, so low compared to new buyers. Food has certainly gone up from inflation and these kids eating more!

[liveintheville]

Mortgage 3k
HOA 400
Electricity in summer very little because we have solar. So 80? On a bad month
Water
Gas just for the house. We have an electric car.
We’d eat out a lot less
Kids activities I’d try to keep as long as possible. They’re both in karate and have been for years so they have friends there and are black belts and I wouldn’t want to set them back. Youngest does piano and loves it but we’d cut that before karate.
I’m guessing we’d be around $5k in Boston