Mindboggling how much we spend on......

Parent Cafe
61

<p>Am enjoying this thread. Like many of you, communications bills are one of my biggest annoyances–doubly so because we live in a rural area and can’t bundle anything. $50/mo internet (wireless and slow, no DSL available), $135 family cell (5 people), $30 landline (need for my clients) and $80 DirecTv (would drop in a second, is for H, he <em>Has</em> to have ESPN classic.) We do not have an antenna, and would have to install tower and a good antenna to watch free tv. I will drop Directv in a second if something happens to H.</p>

<p>Even w/o the tv, my bills seem higher than most folks, and the internet is slow and spotty. Ug. After kids are gone, may get prepaid cell plans. I really need very few minutes and unlimited texting.</p>

<p>Insurance is the other budget buster–car, homeowners, health, life, disability, professional liability. It is easy for this to total $10,000-15000/yr. I have very high deductibles. BC–you don’t have homeowners? I am not comfortable taking that risk, esp. since we live 12 miles from the nearest paid fire dept.</p>

<p>Other than that, we have very few indulgences. We used to travel more, but I hate planes and we have more livestock now and it’s difficult to get away. I have most everything I need or want on my little 100 acre farm and I don’t have much need to get away. The biggest drawback to travel is I don’t want to go without the kids and since S1S2 are 20 and 22, it’s tough to get everyone’s schedules aligned. Hopefully in the future.</p>

<p>Both H and I are people who feel much more comfortable being debt free and having money in the bank. Besides, I am trying to get rid of stuff, not accumulate it!</p>

62

<p>

</p>

<p>Also, some wireless companies offer a discount for credit union members.</p>

63

<p>Living in a remote area is tough for communication services. I read
that the FCC is looking at changing the charter of the USF - before it
was to provide phone service to rural and poor areas. They also
provided cheap or maybe free equipment and maybe service to poor
areas. We have widespread cell phone service so the FCC is looking at
using the USF to provide broadband services to underserved areas.</p>

<p>If you don’t have some kind of broadband, then you can’t do the cheap
TV alternatives easily. I believe that ESPN has some kind of
arrangement with many ISPs that allow you to view their content
online. I know some folks that have had these issues and sometimes
you need town commitment to make it worthwhile for one of the larger
communications companies to set up shop in your area.</p>

<p>I don’t have homeowners insurance but the winter this year is giving
me second thoughts. Last year, our income was about 2.6 times the
value of our home so I don’t necessarily worry that much about it. We
had homeowners for a few years back in the 1990s and never made a
claim. We live on a hill with a huge catchment basin nearby (sometimes
it fills up with water to a level of about fifteen feet). We don’t
really have any natural disasters in our area unless you consider ice
storms, snow and wind. I would also like to sell it and buy something
closer to work. We have a hydrant across the street and the fire
department is 1.5 miles away. In the 23 years we’ve been here, there
hasn’t been one fire in the development.</p>

<p>I’d like to get rid of more stuff too. Stuff often requires maintenance.</p>

64

<p>My employer pays for broadband service but I haven’t used the reimbursement for many years - back in the early 1990s. I’m too lazy to fill out the paperwork every month.</p>

65

<p>Our house is our biggest asset & our lender requires us to carry homeowners insurance as well as hurricane insurance. Once the mortgage is paid off, not sure about carrying the hurricane insurance–so far we have never had any damage from it & the premiums are pretty high.</p>

<p>Not sure why we have cable, but since it’s about $15/month, it doesn’t seem that bad. Will have to think about how to lower landline + internet bill and cut down cell phone costs.</p>

<p>Since neither H nor I nor kids drink much of anything when we go out, just having glasses of tap water is a huge savings. We mostly dine at ethnic restaurants, which are much less expensive than “fine dining.”</p>

66

<p>Bc-appreciate that info. I can certainly see in your circumstances why you opt out of homeowners’. I live in tornado alley, which is always a real threat, plus the lack of fire dept., plus our house is ~2x annual income. </p>

<p>I always think twice about each insurance though. Carry the highest deductible and no extras–towing, road assistance, freezer damage, etc. They try to tack on a lot of frivolous stuff. My umbrella policy does requires fairly high liability limits on the other policies. I definitely view insurance for catastrophic costs that I can’t bear. It also annoys me that they are so demanding that one insure for replacement cost. If my house burns to the ground, I am not going to replace it w/ similar square footage–it will be much smaller.</p>

<p>I live in Amish country. They don’t use insurance and use Mutual Aid through the churchmembers when another family has some dire need. As a group, I am sure they come out far ahead.</p>

<p>/end of soapbox/ I hate insurance!</p>

67

<p>* We did spend a lot of money for private high school. Both of my kids are through college now, and looking back, the high school spending was worth every penny.
*</p>

<p>I agree… we did private K-12…worth EVERY cent. Not one regret. Not one.</p>

68

<p>One of Warren Buffett’s shareholder letters going back about eight or nine years described the insurance business and how wonderful a business it is. People give you a bunch of money in premiums. You invest that money and make a return. And you pay out money in claims. If your claims exceed your premiums and income for the year, you raise rates the following year. If your claims are less than your premiums and income for the year, you have a profit. Berkshire Hathaway (started as an insurance company) has grown 200,000% over a period of about 30 years.</p>

<p>Now insurance does provide an individual benefit - if you can’t afford to cover your losses, then you have to have insurance, either for yourself, your family or your heirs. Once you get to the point where you can cover those losses, you don’t have to pay for insurance. Life insurance is to cover the mortgage, college expenses, maybe death expenses, etc. Life insurance premiums (term) go up exponentially once you hit the age of 50. If you have your home paid off and enough in college savings, then you start thinking about dropping it (50 is when I started thinking about it). Your employer might have much cheaper term insurance available too - especially if the average age of the employees is low.</p>

<p>I wish that I knew that I know now back when I was in my 20s. But in your 20s, you usually don’t care much about this stuff. It’s complicated and it doesn’t feel real.</p>

69

<p>I use Quicken as well and import all of my checking and credit card transactions into it. I charge everything I possibly can to get the 1% cash rebate. I rarely use cash, mainly for the farmers’ market, and so cash is easy to track in the “groceries” category.</p>

<p>We don’t eat out very often, never buy lunch out, work mostly from home so spend practically nothing on clothes. The cable service could be cut back now that DS2 is in college, but I know he’ll want it during breaks so it seems like a hassle to switch plans back & forth. We have solar panels on the roof which have cut our electric bill to less than half and are approaching full payback. We generate very little trash so switched our garbage service to a very small bin, saving $120/year. We travel on business and try to coordinate these trips with seeing family across the country so that airfare can be paid for as a business expense.</p>

<p>Insurance has been a large cost - $2000 for homeowners (no earthquake insurance, would be another $3000), $12,000 for health (high-deductible HSA), $600 for term life for me, another $5700 for term life for DH since we’re principals in our business.</p>

<p>When looking at all of our expenses, having a very high mortgage and a $22K property tax bill trumps everything else we might be spending. All the other minor expenses just seem to be part of the noise. We’ll be selling the house within the next year - it’s crazy and stressful to be working so hard to pay for a larger house than we need now that the nest is empty. Doing repairs and small remodeling projects in order to get the house in shape to sell has been expensive but we want a quick sale once the house goes on the market.</p>

70

<p>We use Quicken 2004 (dinosaur version). Didn’t care about downloading transactions or updating online. It creates more work, but entering every one of our financial transactions and sticking it in the proper category emphasizes (ad nauseum) that we are spending $$! I reconcile all credit cards and checking every month. In fact, I need to do it today.</p>

<p>Am very happy that our mortgage is a small % of income. The real estate agent thought we were nuts at the time for not buying more house, but he wasn’t going to pay for our kids’ college!</p>

71

<p>DW talks on the phone pretty much for a living (RE agent) so she has the 2000 minute plan (and uses it all some months) + data, the rest of us piggyback on that, with 4 phones + my corporate discount it’s around $180/month, but most of it is a business expense.</p>

<p>HD cable + DVR + internet + landline is around $140/month. Sadly, DW and D are TV junkies. Not sure why we keep the landline…</p>

<p>So that’s $300+ per month for communications. Ouch.</p>

<p>Homeowners insurance is required since we have a mortgage, but we have a high deductible; plus, house is worth 3-4x our income, I wouldn’t risk not having it. We are seriously thinking of moving when D graduates high school, it would let us ditch the mortgage and ridiculous taxes and probably net us $2000-$2500 per month in savings (in this area, crossing a town line can drop a house price by 30-40% or more). </p>

<p>We did get 30 year level-premium term life policies around 14 years ago. It’s pretty inexpensive when you get it when you are fairly young. Coupled with AD+D insurance at 6x my income from my company (absurdly cheap, like, $100/year) my wife will be a fairly rich widow if I die in an accident. Hope she doesn’t get any ideas… :cool:</p>

<p>Kids pay their own gas, car expenses, and insurance, and share use the “grandpa” car we got for free. We buy new for our cars but run them till they drop, and don’t buy expensive cars.</p>

<p>D got a job at the movie theatre, now we can all go for free. <– Very economical. :slight_smile:
She also buys her clothes with her own money - this has made her very price-conscious, and she loves 2nd hand stores and thrift shops.</p>

<p>I do spend about $6 for lunch in the building’s cafeteria, but that gets me a hot lunch with a lot of variety every day. Reheating leftovers or making sandwiches has little appeal for me.</p>

72

<p>Well, there’s always this option. </p>

<p>[Nicole</a> Brodeur | A frugal friend leaves big legacy | Seattle Times Newspaper](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nicolebrodeur/2014158767_nicole08m.html]Nicole”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nicolebrodeur/2014158767_nicole08m.html)</p>

73

<p>A member of my husband’s family who lives on the kindness of others, so to speak, envisions themselves as elite foodies. As my husband says, “She makes food with impressive names that no one wants to eat. But is sounds good.”</p>

<p>They just bought a $4,000 coffee maker.</p>

74

<p>I’m the only coffee drinker at home and we have a Dunkin Donuts about a third of a mile away so I go there when I really want a cup of coffee near home. We have free coffee at work. $4,000 is many years of daily Dunkin.</p>

75

<p>This is WHY the economy sucks - NO body is spending any money!!! </p>

<p>Like almost every here. The college bills are the biggest items we are paying now.</p>

76

<p>Actually, the economy is bad because we as a nation import much more than we export, leading to a net loss all the time, so we keep borrowing and need to pay interest on all we borrow. Whenever more is spent than produced/earned, there is always debt, whether for an individual, county, city, state or nation.</p>

77

<p>It’s a two-tiered economy. If you’re working in an area where you’re exporting a lot of stuff, then the economy could actually be quite good.</p>

78

<p>I am not an economist but I see things differently. Evenso US imports more from China, for example, than exports there by $$. There are just some many other aspects of that trade you don’t see. </p>

<p>Basically, US is paying a very very low price to use the natural resources and environment in China. Had some of those thing made in US, the price will be much higher.</p>

<p>Let’s use a dyed shirt as an example. The chemicals and the dyes are so bad to the environment. But, for every shirt the retailer pays only about $0.02 for the dying process. Most of the profit, in other words, are made by US retailers and/or distributors. While the worst of the problems are left in far east for merely $0.02. </p>

<p>I think the #1 reason for the bad economy is the policy of punishing the doers/savers. But that is a different discussion for a different day.</p>

79

<p>yup. Buying/selling on ebay and craigslist lets a person make money without paying any sales tax. Sounds like a real punishment… for everyone else who pays taxes like they should</p>

80

<p>Come on up to New Hampshire where we don’t have a sales tax. The folks from Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts do in droves.</p>