run down of your basic bills
 

the wife handed me a sheet with our gas bill on it. $500 a month! for 2 of us.

we are spending about $1200 on food, 2 kids and a baby.

about $500 eating out.

i eat out for lunch every day, thats around$10 a day, so that is going to have to be cut down.
i think we need to sell the jeep and find something that gets better mileage. i would like to find a volvo T5 wagon, but i dont want a payment.

How much do you have to spend? Is a motorcycle an option for commuting, even occasionally?

Cut the $500 eating out.

Have two kids as well, 11 and 8. Groceries run us $600 per month for a family of four. We don't buy junk food, no soda, etc.....

Infacat I also earn very less money...Many times get delay to pay the bills...

Since I'm retired, I eat out as much as possible. I don't freeze my a$$ off when it comes to heating and drive or fly whenever the spirit moves me. If I can't enjoy retirement what have I got to look forward to??

Bills, I just pay them.

Gas and food have gone crazy. $550 for gas the past few months and at least $600 in food. We do have a 17 daughter, a 15 son (who's skinny as a rail, but eats like a horse) and the MIL. No junk food or sodas either like SM.

Buying the 91 318is is a big gas saver at 25 mpg around town, but we have 3 drivers. I'm trying to convince my wife to sell the MB R350 and get a car that gets better mpg.

Being on a heat pump has the electrical bill at over $300 a month as well.

Add DirecTV, cell, etc. and it all adds up.

If I knew how much we spend I'd know how much we take in and I'm not sure I'd want to know that figure. Just glad there's always enough to go around plus a little extra.
Jim

My half of:
Rent 675
Parking 100
Cable/internet 60
Gas 20
Electric 50

Then me:
Cell phone 65
Gas 250
Car insurance 100
Car payment 200
Life/ disability insurance 40
Health insurance 100
Food 200
Party fund 300

The minuscule amount left over goes in savings. Luckily my 401k auto deducts. I can not wait until I get out of my trainee role

I was looking at the basic bills I have. It is amazing how much insurance costs. We have a great insurance company, but the between the house and three cars it is a chunk of change. The cars are pretty much a bargain, the current house insurance is more than the mortgage payment on my first house. Throw in the gas, electric, cable, internet, property tax, water & phone bill and it adds up to an decent number. I am real glad we paid off the house.

Family of 5
Mort+Property tax 1,500
Elec 200
phone/internet 90
trash 30
water 26
Food 400
auto Insurance 100
Sundries 200
auto Gas 120
Gas propane 30
Charity 100
Car payments 0

We are in the process of reevaluating our priorities and scaling back on our expenses right now and I get the feeling we're not alone. Same income + higher expenses = trouble...

seems we all have something in common, or at least a lot of you have something i can relate to.
the boy, 11, skinny and eats like a horse, and i should know, we also have 2 horses, but the daughter makes up for it, she eats like a bird. (he really does eat more than one horse. $$ wise).

cutting out eating out for lunch is like cutting off my leg, its going to be hard to quit or even cut back.

groceries are obviously killing us. $1200! this does NOT include the eating out. but, it does include everything we need, TP, soap, all the house hold stuff, not just food.

like someone said, i did not want to know what we spend.

oh, and a $1500 house payment

we have cut out the cable tv, we just have a few channels now. but we did get netflix which i watch more than regular Tv, its just a pain sometimes when it cuts out. i only miss a few channels anyway, discovery, nat geo, history... ones like that.

i may have to go back to playing music to make some more $$. i dont know what else i could do. its not much but it helps out.

ive got the 3.0 on an engine stand part way apart, i dont have the $ to do anything with it right now.

Four teens, one 12 y/o, four drivers, five cars, a few miles from town = a lot of miles and $$ in gas and insurance. They all seem to eat quite a bit as well. Private school tuition, college expenses, health insurance, etc. It adds up to several billion dollars, almost infinity.

First step on a monetary tracking/repair program?

The good news is you are on it.

Get to know your spending habits, down to a reasonable scale. What turns most people off is the grind of keeping up with where the money goes at a molecular accounting level, so they don't.

Track what is reasonable, then stack everything else in miscellaneous. Once you understand the big picture, get smart on miscellaneous. And don't beat yourself up. Do this by hand for a few months and keep every f'ing receipt.

Then, and only then, get whatever home financial software makes sense to you...and use it. Every two weeks sit down and enter the data...you have to.

I will tell you that eating out is the absolute biggest discretionary expense most people make and fail to capture...ok, other than interest on credit cards.

Speaking of CC's, Get three: One for you, one for your wife and one for emergency's. Spending habits leap off the statement.

I have wheel books in the two cars I use for the farm and my business. I track every mile I drive for tax purposes. What I have found over the years is that I waste trips, drive because it is easy (and cheap, sorta').

Lastly, divide you fixed and variable costs up. Set a goal for reducing both.

Sorry for the lecture, but the basics are golden.

Good luck. Packing a lunch doesn't mean you are not eating well.

Property taxes $4100/month

I'll stop there

W.T.F.?!?!?!

Where the hell do you live man, Buckingham Palace?!?!

For those spending an obscene amount for food each month...
A few weeks ago I was clicking through channels and came across a show on TLC called "Extreme Couponing" and was perplexed, so I watched a bit.
What I saw shocked me. People buying food for next to nothing. We're not talking $100 worth of food.. we're talking $500, $1000, or more worth of food.. and paying nearly nothing:eek::eek:
It requires some darn good math skills for sure...

I ebeleve her $1200 grocery bill was taken down to like $20...
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As far as my bills..
Rent = $2300
Car insurance $123
Electricity... (Was running $500/mo till we moved, we'll find out soon)
Gas (heat) Don't know yet...expected to be HIGH.
Phont/Internet - $100
Cell phone $100ish.
DirecTV - $80ish
Car payment - $260 (BMW X5 for sale...)
Child Support - $320
Driving Gas - About $40/week
Food - woman buys most of it. Probably about $400/mo for three. Could be less, if she knew how to shop.


There's also business bills I have to pay to keep myself stocked with parts. That averages about $1000 per month at a minimum plus average $4-500/month for my employee.
My tax lady says I need to sell about $7,000/month worth of product to break even and self-sustain. Lately, I've been selling between 4-5k/month.

I hope you receive that much in services each month.

$1500 a month on groceries? What the hell are you guys NFL linemen?

Wow, that is 49,200 per year. WFT :eek:

Is that for a house or a local shopping mall?

I was not happy with my 2,700 per year property tax bill.