My husband doesn't want me to share our income or amounts of our expenses but he did say I could share our percentages. You can read about recommended percentages in the last post I did. Here is our budget and where our money goes:
We have always given more than needed to cover anything that we may have forgotten that was given to us in gifts, food or whatever. Sure, we probably don't need to do that but we choose too and besides - it is all God's anyway and He said to prove Him in Malachi:
Malachi 3:10
Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Give God 10% and give yourself 10%! Currently we are building our long-term savings, moving expenses and our retirement fund. We have been building our retirement since our 20's and will be millionaires when we reach 65, we have even knocked off 4% for inflation. Our future is set and that is what helps me sacrifice now, knowing that we will live like no one else when we are 65 because we are living like no one else now. On our financial plan, we will own a home in full, own a second home from inheritance which we plan on selling, have millions in retirement and have had insurance to cover any financial crisis up until that point. All of this on ONE income - so for all those that say we are so poor having the wife stay at home - let's talk when we reach retirement age ok?
We rent a mobile home and we have a good deal, one that you just shouldn't be able to get in the area we live in but God provided! Other than that, we only pay renter's insurance. If anything breaks for leaks, the landlord fixes it! Our utilities are phone, internet, electric, water and garbage. We don't have cell phone bills but we do use an emergency cell with Tracfone that we pay only $120 a year for. I'm home mostly all day - we simply don't need a phone bill larger than $30 a month!
We are believers in insuring for the future as we learned that lesson through NOT insuring things, which I spoke about in our financial story post. We insure our rental home, car, health, life and retirement (though retirement isn't insurance, it is savings). Being prepared when the storms come can help you not have a total breakdown as I've seen others have. We learned from Dave Ramsey not to depend on Social Insecurity because by the time we are retirement age - it will be a miracle if it is even around.
You may have noticed that a lot of our income goes to medical, this is because we currently had a lot of medical bills with my 2 surgeries and my son's hospital visits. We also pay this amount even if we have no bills because are funding an HSA with pre-tax dollars that remain tax-free. I think that every family should take advantage of these accounts! Premiums are only going to go up, so we are accepting that a very large portion of our budget must go to medical insurance and our HSA, since I also plan on having more children, which means more c-sections. For my pregnancy and c-section in 2012, it cost $75,000! We only paid about $6,000 of that - thanks to insurance!
We own our car and just pay for car insurance, gas and maintenance (oil changes, etc.). We plan on always driving a used car and never having a car payment. I can wait on my dream car until I'm a millionaire in retirement - we have goals and car payments aren't part of my dream! We buy clothing usually yearly or whenever needed. We normally don't buy clothing each month. We don't do much recreation that costs money but we do get take-out quite often, so that would be part of that category. We have no debt except for a few medical bills left but that is paid for with our HSA.
The last two categories I haven't talked about yet are food and personal. Our food budget has gone up very high due to my ill health but now that I'm regaining my health, I plan to get it down again. Personal money is for my husband's haircuts, his spending money, homeschool supplies and miscellaneous needs like diapers, wipes, soap, etc.
The debt category didn't even make our pie chart because it is ZERO!
I hope that you enjoyed looking into our family's budget and how we use our money, I plan on doing a mixture of family scenarios in the next post!
