We have a freezer, and have always shopped the sales because we can freeze so much. I guess this wouldn’t have cut costs during college years…because we always did it. But a suggestion for those of you who don’t already.
Just this week, my favorite laundry detergent was on sale (and a large bottle) for $4.99. I bought 5. My favorite shampoo was also on sale…I bought 4.
We have a utility room in our basement with shelves on both long walls for storing things like this.
It’s just the way we shop.
Ah yes, the fallout shelter concept!
There are already many great tips here! As a couple who took out full loans for med school, and got married and had kids in med school/residency, we are amazing budgeters. We ran a super-tight ship in residency and the early career years, managing to pay off loans within 12ish years, around 30-32k per year during payoff, concurrently sent the kids to k-12 private, and had already sold our “starter” home and moved to the current one with a mortgage that was almost half our salary initially. We made it all work with a detailed plan reviewed every month: once you see where every penny is going you can make cuts. We used to laugh at how ridiculous private parent peers were about spending, with lavish vacations several times a year, expensive handbags/clothes, and unbelievably expensive sports/private coaches. One named a salary more than triple the median avg income in our area, and around what the two of us made at the time and said how awful it would be to make that, you would be so poor, how would anyone afford private schools.
We definitely did not feel poor!
The monthly budget is key: evey month a chunk would move over to the private school tuition account, then all the bills , then whatever was left was all there was to spend. The first few years of private school was when we still had medloans — it was hard but we could have chosen public schools and a smaller house and coasted. Once we were 5 yrs into practice the salaries soared , then the loans wrapped up, but we only loosened the budget a little and started socking away more aggressively into retirement as well as 529. Most peers increased spending dramatically when their loans were done.
We continued to spend less on groceries, did not do the fancy summer sleep away camps, did not eat out more than once a month, family movies on Friday at home and day trips or local hikes for adventure on weekends(until they were busy with arts/sports on weekends and there was no time). We did start doing bigger vacations once the loans were ending, some really nice places we wanted to see.
No fancy travel teams, but by the time they were in HS both had fees of 4-8k per year for the bigger activities they did: we noted that and made sure to move those alotted funds towards college. We started the math on how to cover 2 at full pay a few yrs before the first went, and realized 529s would not be a lot, so we got ahead by shifting a lot more to college savings the 2 years before the first went. We are cashflowing most of their college , more than people and those terrible calculators think “is possible “ on our combined salary, but for us it is just a temporary mindshift back toward our tighter medloan years, and we prefer a tight well planned budget to college loans!
How did people who think that that the income of two physicians is “so poor” get their money?
The comment was back when we, together, made less than half of what we made once we had full /partner salaries a few years later, and many peer parents were lawyers or investors in top firms already over 300k on a single salary (yet maxed out there so 2 physicians eventually surpasses that), and because we had kids fairly young, most with kids the same age are 5+ years older than us. There are definitely some with unbelievable trusts/generational wealth, or did not pay for law/med school themselves if they went, did not grow up poor or even average, and have no understanding of what the average American earns and spends. It is always a silent chuckle when that group says they cannot afford full pay.
It’s a silent chuckle because from a cash flow standpoint- they really CAN’T afford it!
The ones who confess that they’ve refinanced several times “so we barely have equity in the house”, the ones who are forever trading up their cars, the monthly nut just to get to work and keep a roof over their heads- Wow. I had a boss a long time ago who was in a perpetual rage at her husband that every time they needed some extra cash his answer was “HELOC”. I didn’t know to the dime how much she made- but I had a general idea (more than me!) and I didn’t understand how she couldn’t afford to fix the deck, paint the house, get the chimney cleaned, service the furnace, etc. without digging themselves into an ever deepening financial hole.
And yet…
Good for you guys for figuring out the lean years so elegantly!