Health insurance. Auto insurance and maintenance.
Health insurance and medical bills. Professional liability insurance for our business is also very expensive.
Thought this would be an interesting exercise. While I track what we spend every year, I’ve never made a pie chart to see how categories compare. Here’s an approx. of ours: home (insurance, maintenance, utilities, p. taxes, etc.): 25% taxes : 20%; ; medical (insurance +); 15%; auto/gas/insurance: 14%; food (dining out and in): 12%; travel: 4%; contributions: 4%; entertainment: 2%; pet: 1%; misc.: 2.5%; personal (clothes, haircuts, etc.) .5% I didn’t include any investment fees, assuming that just reduces our returns.
Kids are grown and gone. Taxes are terrible this year and I’m sure in our #1 position. My daughter’s wedding will take #2 position this year. Traveling to visit the kids is #3. Our Costco refund was $1290.04, so we must be spending a lot there.
I need to look at what I’ve spent on kitchen items in the past year. We’ve gotten dutch ovens, gorgeous cutting boards, two knife sharpeners. I need a good kitchen scale too.
@bestwhit Losing weight is very expensive. Lol. That is if you suddenly enjoy clothing and can’t stop buying! I’m down 62 pounds. I’ve spent more in the last 4 months than in last 4 years on clothes?
Mine has changed somewhat since I originally started this thread - adult child living at home (food, utilities, phone, car insurance, roof over head) - grrrr!
Well, adult child moving back home is still likely cheaper than adult child that needs full financial support, @momo2x2018. We are in the latter club.
Still we are happy she’s making some progress on her chronic health issues and remains happy and connected to us and good friends and family.
That and federal taxes are currently out highest expenses.
Probably pets and house projects.
I feed my dog Ollie. I’m convinced the high cancer rates in animals comes in part from that hard dry processed kibble.
Seems like there is always something going on with the house. We just put in a house humidifier and water treatment including reverse osmosis in the kitchen sink. We figure that will pay for itself as we are able to drop water delivery.
Home improvements — at least this past year. We redid our 30 year old kitchen and replaced our 25 year old washer and dryer. Also planning to redo our 30 year old main floor powder room.
But less expensive than living expenses at a college that is out of commuting range, right?
we are supporting 4 kids right now. The biggest expenses are of course college costs (about 1/3 of take home pay); then there’s the really annoying Cars/Insurance for 5 drivers; (midwest here; no public transport); and then the next biggie is kid’s activities. 8th grader will NOT be doing one of them in HS; so that will save 1000s! AND we’ve figured that when S15 graduates in 5 weeks; and starts his job; we will be saving a little more somewhere.
question: when your kids start real jobs, do you keep them on your health insurance policies? how about car policies? Is it cheaper/beneficial to keep them on and have them pay back? we have awesome health insurance.
Whether or not to keep young adults on your insurance depends on various factors. For Auto insurance, once we shipped the cars, our insurer said we had to get new insurance as they weren’t authorized to do business in the other states. We transferred title and bought them their own policies. We had S pay for his own insurance as he had funds from a relative and sumner jobs and working at school.
For health insurance, we kept them on the family plan until they aged out as there was only a $5-10 savings on premiums for us if we switched to a 2-person plan and our policy coverage is excellent. The portion of premiums S would have paid would have been several hundred $$/month.
Similarly for phone, we have TMobile 55+ plan—me and D on one plan and H and S on the other. It’s only $60 for 2 lines with no throttle unlimited data, text and phone.
@ucbalumnus - No, because I’m paying that too!
This year it was travel. We just splurged on a trip to Paris (normally do not take vacations like this) and it was amazing! ? Other than that, I’m pretty frugal. I guess I could say I’m splurging to live in an apartment in a nice area of my new city. It isn’t the most expensive one in the area, but I could live in a less desirable location for less money.
@bgbg4us - we kept them on until the end unless they had good health insurance from their own job. D2 was living far away, and our insurance plan didn’t work well for her there. D1 stayed on since she was nearby.
We found out that having 1 child on the plan meant that you were paying “family” rates, whether 1 child or 5, so we kept D1 on (since D3 was still a dependent and on our plan anyway).
We are still paying D3’s car insurance, although we spun her off onto her own policy for liability reasons. She just graduated so we’ll do that for another year or so.
Yes, it is important to be sure what the insurance covers AND excludes in deciding whether to keep kids on family policy or have them get their own. Our policy covered our kids anywhere for medical but NOT the auto policy.
For the past four years, college tuition for D, but that has ended now. This past six months, home improvements and necessary items for the new build outside of the mortgage itself…appliances, dishes, window treatments, etc. In the next six months, my son’s wedding including travel to bridal shower and rehearsal dinner for 30. In the past before tuition and going forward after the wedding in September, my discretionary income (haha, if you can call my meager amounts that) are travel and the expenses (dining out) that go hand in hand with it.
@NEPatsGirl, we spent a ton on tuition for 3 kids over 6 years, and once they were done we started house projects too.
I’m afraid to think about wedding costs. We focused on college and cars when they graduated, and don’t feel compelled to spent too much on weddings. We will likely help, but won’t go overboard.
@bgbg4us - S1 stayed on our policy until my H turned 60 and qualified for Tricare as a military retiree. Their rules for adult child coverage are different, so S1 went on his company medical, but stayed on the dental/ vision I have through my job until he turned 26. He then signed up for his own with no prompting from us ( something that still amazes me ?) S2 still lives with us and qualifies for Medicaid in our state.