Submitted by mediocre-plebeian t3_11efed6 in personalfinance
My spouse and I tracked our expenses for January-February and we are consistently over spending our income by about 300-350 per month, so we are losing that much each month. By my math, it will only be 1-2 years until all our money is gone.
I would gladly welcome any insight or critiques you all have on where I can save or budget better. Thanks in advance!
Goals: stay under our budget by at least 100-200 per month and roll any extra into a HYSA to increase emergency fund for impending expenses listed below. I would also love to be able to contribute more to my 401k per the prime directive.
I am aware that an obvious answer may be "increase your income" or "stop tithing". My spouse works part time from home but hours are limited to about 2-3 hrs/week due to not enough work to go around/lack of communication + with her salary range it's not worth it for her to work FT outside home (most of her paycheck would go to daycare).
Gross income ~58k (semi-LCOL area) Net income ~38k Net monthly ~ 3000 net monthly after tithing on gross income ~2600
about 9k in checking, and 3k in Discover HYSA @ 3.50% APY
I'm contributing 6% to an employer matched Roth IRA (50% up to 6%); balance is 11,000.
Biggest Monthly Expenses:
- Mortgage 30 yr fixed rate @ 3.75%: 889 including 33 for PMI
- car payment: 280. This will be paid for in about 5 months.
- Food for 2 adults and a toddler: 400-600. We dine out about or less and usually keep it under $20 total.
- Water/electricity: ~ avg 200
- gas: 200
- Mobile phone plan: 92
- internet: 85
impending Expenses:
- New baby due in a few months: expected $3k up front
- New HVAC system within the next 1-3 years quoted at 8-10k
- New used car may be needed within the next 1-5 years (I currently drive an 18 year old Honda with over 350k miles and valued at about 4k if sold to a private party).
- Timing belt replacement and maintenance for said Honda - 1k
Changes made so far:
- I negotiated a 8.5% salary increase last year.
- had appraisal of home so PMI will likely be canceled soon.
- trying out Visible by Verizon plan to save $30/mo on phone bill.
- we are trying to stick to $100/week food budget
- In the past year I've donated plasma a few times and flipped some marketplace items for a total profit of ~$1300
TL;DR: not making enough and spending too much. Looking for ways to change this.