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My total monthly expenses including food, gas, mortgage, internet, electricity, etc, etc, is $3,200 a month. I have a family I have to pay for. Is that a lot? I feel like I am pretty frugal but it does sound like a lot.
This does not include my 401k and stock buys or any of my bullshit I decide to buy like new headlights etc etc.
Also I am from America.
| Thats a lot | 9 | |
| Not a lot | 5 |
Depending on how much your mortgage is and how many children you support and where you are from, I'd say that's average.
Something like 30% of your income to bills means you're doing well, I'm scraping by on a little over 50%
You don't have to share what your income is to us, but find the percentage your total monthly income goes toward your total monthly bills. It kinda sets a well defined limit on what you could afford in one month
30% of just bills or all monthly expenses combined? I combined my budget for food and gas in my sum.
That was something a banker and economist acquaintance I knew said. I compile all my monthly I expenses I know I have to pay for, that's rent, electricity, insurance, car payment, gas, phone bill, food, etc et al. It's all about the debt to income ratio. I know I have to pay for them so I account for them.
It's not pretty, but usually in a month I have a few extra hundred to endeavor on one of my goals. I just took my cat to the vet, his anemia looks better and the cyst is confirmed benign. I also got a voucher from the humane society to help cover the costs and there are credit cards that will cover up to 80% of the bill. I also booked and paid to meet my credit limit on my dental credit card an appointment to extract my three remaining abscessed teeth. That was just this last month prior, all of my bills paid, buying food to last for a month (meaning today's grocery shopping might be less expensive), also buying a car recently. I met my basic needs, just the things I deem necessary for my modest survival, and afford some progress on my goals.
I planned all that by paying for expensive bills early and doing a bunch of little things together until I had a relatively free check to use as I saw fit
With everything I account for, my debt to income ratio is about 55%, so I've gotta be selective about how I save and spend. Figure out what yours is, if you know you spend $300 a month on groceries then write it down. If your family gets reliable and consistent income elsewhere write it down. After everything you know you have to pay for, you're left with what you can consider extra income. It could be for headlights or augurs (true story) or it could be for personal things, goals, new possessions. But that percentage, that amount, it paints a much better picture on how liberal you should feel on your spending
That sounds rather reasonable. It varies a lot depending on where you lived. There are places where that would be upper middle class, and places where that would be poverty.
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and six, result misery.”
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
No Brit could live on £20 a year these days (a single McDonald's meal for three costs only a bit less than that). And nor could I survive on the E6 basic monthly pay of $800 that I got in 1980.
But Dickens' point remains valid.
I have no idea how your expenditure relates to the current, average American household budget, but that should be almost as irrelevant to you as it is to me. The only thing that matters is that you can cover the basics, afford enough of the nice things that make life worth living and put aside a little for the future on your present income. From what I've read, an awful lot of Americans who would consider themselves middle class are living pay-check to pay-check. They have no financial leeway, so even a relatively small emergency like needing major car repairs can dump them into a vicious downward spiral.
I do still have abit of spending money and I put some of that back to save. I always assumed I was really frugal because I buy cars with cash and have never had a car payment. I never buy the best of anything I always get the cheap stuff cheap clothes etc. It surprised me when I added my expenses up how much they were but im assuming its less than most people's because I do not have a car payment.