How much do you spend a month?

Question

How much do you spend a month on everything, including rent, food, utilities, etc? Do you spend more than you make?

Answer 1

I spend about 30% of my gross income, about $2700. Broken down, that's about $1650 on my mortgage, $300 for my utilities, $500 for various expenses that show up on my credit card (paid in full each month, of course!), and $150 or so in long-term expenses (a car every 8-10 years is the main thing). Another 30% or so goes to taxes (including a soul-crushing $6000 per year in property tax) and I invest about 40%.

Doug

Answer 2

I have never shown anyone my cashflow statement (my income minus my expenses). But you've got an honest avatar. I allocate:
$50 to cell phone
$80 to electricity (easy to save during the summer, as my house is naturally cooled)
$50 for gas (Summer compensates for Winter)
$50 for insurance (rising, though )
$50 for phone line and slow internet (if you know a cheaper way in Indiana, hit me up)
$50 for property taxes (I own my house outright, but property taxes NEVER go away... and they're rising, too)
$20 water bill (hits the spot every time)
$130 student loan payment
$55 bus pass (screw gas prices... Indy buses use alternative fuel)
$75 food (lots of mac 'n' cheese)
$25 miscellaneous (toothbrushes, vacation money, that sort of thing)

All other income goes into investments or the replenishing of my 3-month fund. My monthly committed expenses are $635... and they'd be a lot lower if I hadn't let myself get suckered into poor people's debt.

I spend 81.88% of my conservatively-estimated monthly income (I'm an hourly employee, so some months I make a little more than others).

If I could give you one piece of advice, if you go to college, go there with a career goal that doesn't include my 18-year-old vision of "living like Earnest Hemingway." Hemingway was poor, and poverty sucks.

Answer 3

Hey probably positioned a few of it in the direction of our crumbling infrastructure. Hire a few inspectors who truthfully can do the roles of bridge inspection, ( bear in mind final 12 months's cave in which killed eleven), and 1000s if no longer enormous quantities of bridges underneath hazard. Heck, probably we will truthfully rent a few Border Patrol marketers and truthfully fund and construct the fence. Oh larger but, probably we will have the machines we desperately want established at our ports so one hundred% of boxes coming in can also be inspected and/or x-rayed in contrast to the five% presently being performed. Pay for our veterans to get the healthcare they deserve after going to conflict. Oh how approximately schooling. I recognise in FL we simply had a $three hundred Million reduce on Thursday three/6/08 and that simply covers from March till June. Part time academics already allow cross and informed to not report back to paintings Another $500 Million goes to be reduce out of subsequent 12 months's schooling price range presently underneath assessment. Community faculties have suspended enormous quantities of categories, one of the most equal categories our persons wanted for task re-coaching due to the fact that there present task has been shipped foreign

Answer 4

I live alone and spend about $1400 a month for rent, cable phone elec and heat and food. Then If I go out or do stuff with my kids it goes higher and it does. Forgot car insurance and gas.

Answer 5

Yeah, we live comfortably but we are pretty much on empty by the time everything is payed. We do have some high bills and morgage but yes, we cut it close. But we have only once actually spent more than we make.

Answer 6

if I did that - I'd be pretty much homeless and in debt - and unable to have a computer and internet access now wouldn't I

Answer 7

I'm rapidly approaching a "break even" stage.

Answer 8

Pretty close after all is paid for.