Your top expenses by % of net?

[Mrs. Dinero]

Tuition 22%
Mortgage 16%
IRAs 11%
Autos 6%

Looking forward to the 5 year outlook when tuition and autos will be none & minimal without the kids.

How about you? What are your major expenses as percentage of net household income?

[Deleted]

Mortgage - 43%

IRA - 16%

Childcare - 9%

Tuition - 7%

College savings - 5%

[resolution]

Here is the info from my spreadsheet. I am guilty of just lumping all of my off budget spending into a "stuff" category, which has come in at number 5. I can afford to do that for now, but if we ever find our dream house and buy it, I will probably have to tighten things up quite a bit.

mortgage  8.9%
groceries 6.3%
auto expenses 5.9%
dining out 5.6%
misc spending 4.8%
heat 2.0%
electric 1.9%
cat 1.6%
internet landline  1.7%
video games 0.8%
cell phone 0.6%
umbrella insurance  0.4%

[Deleted]

If I define "Net" as SS plus my pension plus what I withdrew from the investments, minus income taxes last year:


20.5% to charity, including church pledge

12.5% Travel


10.1% to my late husband's brother and his wife; it was an amount DH and I agreed upon before he died, to end after 24 payments. Last one was 11/2018 so that's gone this year. Travel will be way up this year and I'll also be spending more on the house; the new hot water heater and the new oven have made that a certainty.

[sheilaincali]

My basics

The Boy's Tuition: 17%

Mortgage; 12%

Car Payments: 9%

Notes: The Boy will be a senior this year. He has taken out approximately $21,000 in student loans. The rest we cash flowed. Sticker price for his school is $60,000 a year (includes room and board- first 3 years he lived on campus)

In a year one car will be paid off and our car payments will be cut in half.

[hoops902]

Daycare - 25%

Nothing else is close.  

Groceries 6.5%

[pooks]

Going off of net (so no income taxes) and just using expenses.

PITI-24% (I hate that bill)
Groceries- 11.2%
Utilities- 5%
Everything else is piddly.  

[lynnerself]

Up until the last few months, definitely health insurance 20% of fixed income.

Now that we are are medicare that may be down some, but still our highest expense.

(I'm not including travel here, because it is variable and optional)

[giramomma]

The kids are our largest expense. But, I'm lumping in everything: extra food costs, activities, private school, clothing, tutors, medical copays for appointments for them, braces, etc.  3/4 of my kids need new bikes. Adult bikes are expensive, even used.

That giant sucking sound? That's my kids, using up all my money.

But, they are cute..even the stinky teen boy. Yesterday I came home from work and Miss M came running to me saying "Mom Mom Mom." DH has taught her to say "Oh Yeah!" like the kool-aid man. So we are reenacting family guy pretty often these days:

[Gardening Grandma]

Our top 3 as a % of gross income
Health Ins Premiums 12%
Mortgage 11%
Federal Income tax 11%

[teen persuasion]

Net household income? Net of what?

Using earnings, retirement contributions, by far: 58%
Using gross income (after tax refunds) : 54%

Next highest is payroll medical/dental/hsa deductions: 8.5%

[jelloshots4all]

25% savings/401k/college/IRA- not all net 

20% housing (mortgage, ins, taxes)

13% auto which is high right now, had to buy and finance 3 cars this year after having zero car pymts

16% approx. for phone, cable. electricity, etc utilities

The other 26% covers food and other crap

This is off my base salary, all net except 401k

[buystoys]

YTD from gross:

Major housing project  15%

Medical expenses  13%

Federal taxes  10%

Mortgage  6%

Auto payment  5%

We withdrew extra from DH's IRA for our housing project this year, so the numbers are a bit skewed. 

[Deleted]

Mine is a bit different. 

30% - Electricity
20% - Food/Household
10% - Property Taxes

This is the number one reason I want a smaller space to live in and water that isn't 800 feet in the ground. I freeze in the winter and sweat in the summer, and electrical power is still my biggest yearly expense.

This year home repairs will surpass it, as I have already done a bunch of surface well equipment replacement myself and am now waiting for a $800 septic pumpout. My washing machine died 2 months ago, my dryer this week.

This year has been never ending when it comes to repairs...

[princessleia]

Mortgage + Property Taxes 20%
College Tuition/Room + Board 16%
Tithing + Charitable Giving 11%

[steph08]

Daycare: 24.7%
PITI: 19%
Groceries/Gas: Around 19% too

[geenamercile]

House payment/insurance/HOA fees-20%
Food/groceries- 14 %
Car payments- 12 % (  this year has sucked with cars.  One was taken out by a deer (Had 140K on it)   The other one had the camshaft going bad only 87K miles on it but over the 10 year warranty, we parked it and it got hit by a drunk driver.  That kind of ended up well since the insurance gave us 4000 for it.  But still wasn't planning on replacing that one for a few more years.)c


 

[Value Buy]

How can an IRA be considered an expense?
If that were true, every dollar anyone save in a coin jar at home should be listed under expenses

[Tiny]

My "net" numbers are skewed because I'm saving approx 26% pretax and then approx 6% after tax (in long term retirement type things) of my gross income.

Of net:
PITI = 22%
Sinking Funds = 15% (money I save to pay large bills thru out the year)
Savings after tax 5% (I'm trying to build up my "after tax not retirement based" savings)

I either spend or save the rest.

(Back in the day, I did the Plan of: work on getting the savings parts where I want them first, and then I won't have to worry so much about what I spend (as long as I can pay my CCs in full each month). It took me alot of years to build up to the amount of 'savings' I am currently doing - the Sinking Funds are part of this "savings". I don't worry about my day to day spending generally. ) So yeah, I focused more on building up savings and how my spending effected my ability to save. Having a high predictable income facilitated this immensely.

[TheHaitian]

Mortgage : 61%
Everything else : 39%

[countrygirl2]

Our income has been all over the place so hard to tell. But estimating.

But highest expenses would be

Just miscellaneous everything, clothes, repairs, supplies, eating out lets say $250 a week.
 $12500 a year. 19.5%

Medicre, supplement and scrips about $12000 a year, expect it to keep rising, medicare is not cheap .19%

Taxes about $10000, charge most tax prep to business.  Next year all taxes for everything and prep plus our personal insurance will be paid by business income so will give us a big boost. But not yet. 15%  So about 91.5% total, that's probably about right, we are spending about all we are taking in.

Groceries had been running $200 a week, that's $10,400 a year, have reduced that to $600 a month and think I can get it to $100 with our meat runs and cooking less, so will say around $6000 a year next year. 16%

Then property taxes and insurance about $5000 8%

Gas hubs spends at least $50 a week so $2600, me $80 a month so $1000, $3600 a year, lawn mower gas and backhoe to property account. And a couple tanks for hubs a month to properties. 6%

Electric bill though I'm getting it down, getting ready to empty basement freezer and putting the balance in upstairs freezer, don't expect much savings, using cold water instead of hot helped, about $3000, maybe less. But that will be less this year by at least $500 hope to reduce it more. We still have something with the AC, they guy will be back Tuesday to replace some valve.  But its is working much better, he said it would with it out but it needs to be in it, does some kind of regulation, I know nothing about.  He said the issues with it were what was driving our light bill higher each month. I hope to see it go to $2000 next year but will figure on last years. 5%


Cut the heck out of TV, phones, and internet, $480 cable, Internet $720, Hubs and my cells $684, so total $1884. We were paying $250 a month and not including cells!! And cut Sirius radio way back, don't remember the amount but I know it was over half, have another coming do soon, will do the same tell them we will drop it so expect the same, huge savings. 3%
total 76.5%

I think we may lose electric so will post this quickly then edit. Another storm going through.

[jkapp]

Looking at 2018's numbers:

Savings 22%

Mortgage 14%

IRA 12%

Prop Tax    8%

Groceries    7%

Utilities 4%

Fuel 3%

Internet 2%

Home/Auto Ins    2%

[laterbloomer]

Mortgage 22%
Household improvement 19%
Travel 10%

That was actually interesting to do.

[laterbloomer]

Jun 23, 2019 12:07:48 GMT -5 TheHaitian said:

Mortgage : 61%
Everything else : 39%

Is that just your mortgage? Or are you including taxes, heat, water etc? That percentage seems crazy to me.

[TheHaitian]

Jun 23, 2019 22:06:57 GMT -5 laterbloomer said:

Jun 23, 2019 12:07:48 GMT -5 TheHaitian said:

Mortgage : 61%
Everything else : 39%

Is that just your mortgage? Or are you including taxes, heat, water etc? That percentage seems crazy to me.

That is:
Interest, Principal, Escrow (Insurance + Property Taxes + PMI) = Mortgage Payment

[haapai]

The accountant in me is a little miffed by some of the things that y'all are listing as "expenses".  On the other hand, the accountant is also quite delinquent and has no idea how her own expenses stack up. 

I suspect that if I ran the numbers, my employee portion of health insurance premiums would exceed the interest, taxes, and insurance portions of my mortgage which is pretty amazing when you consider the fact that I am unmarried, childless, and have insurance through a group plan with my employer. 

Total transportation expenses may also be greater than my ITI, despite having a paid-off, fully depreciated car that gives me no trouble, no-fault insurance, and a one-mile commute to work.

Really basic expenses that you must pay in order to avoid becoming a criminal or a health-care supplicant can soak up a shocking percentage of a small income.  Thank goodness the house was cheap! 

[Deleted]

Taxable Investing: 57%
Entertainment: 23%
Food 4%
Property Taxes: 4%

I have taxable investing as an “expense”, just the way I roll.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Travel.....30%
Charitable donations.....10%
Taxes.......10% (property and sales)
Food/eating out/social obligations.....10%

[haapai]

Jun 24, 2019 9:53:02 GMT -5 @aj said:

Taxable Investing: 57%
Entertainment: 23%
Food 4%
Property Taxes: 4%

I have taxable investing as an “expense”, just the way I roll.

No offense taken.  There are quite a few valid arguments for tracking cash flows instead of expenses when it comes to understanding and improving one's personal finances. 

Paying attention to cash flows instead of expenses transformed my life (and Carleton Sheets had nothing to do with it).  Paying attention to where my income was going was crucial to figuring out that I had no discretionary income, no liquid reserves, and was going to get creamed if I wasn't prepared for the next bump on the road. 

Paying attention to cash flows instead of expenses is probably why I survived the great recession and somehow landed up buying a home when everyone else was losing theirs. (Yeah, I know where that comes from.)  I would not be where I am today if I had stuck with the accountants' definition of expenses.

[shanendoah]

So far for 2019:
Mortgage PITI = 45%
All other bills = 10%
To savings = 21%
House expenses (getting new house set up, including appliances and furniture) = 19%


In 2018:
All Bills (including mortgage PITI) = 47%
Legal expenses = 15%
House expenses (getting the house ready for sale, including storage while it was on the market) = 10%

all numbers are net