40 hour work weeks, for both parents, are discussed.
I am just describing the world only 30 years ago. A double income is almost a requirement now.
I am just describing the world only 30 years ago. A double income is almost a requirement now.
Single income COULD work for the vast majority of Americans, but then they need to be happy with less stuff.
As far as I remember, all my class mates went home for lunch ( we actually had dinner ).
$2000/month for health insurance for family.
$2000+/month in rent or mortgage
$1000/month in groceries
And we are up to $100,000 a year in just the bare one expenses to exist.
Maybe add some retirement savings, a vacation for a week or two, maybe some college savings, and we are into $200,000+ territory.
$2000 for health insurance in the US? Not from a professional job. Normal employee copays for a famils are in the $200-$400 per month range.
$2000 rent? No way. Move. You can live for $1000 or less in many areas of the world with great jobs.
$1000 groceries? No way, try more like $500.
here is the spending report of a family of 3. It is about $25,000.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm-fa...
That should be the baseline for where you think. Not some crazy fantasy land with a $2000 mortgage and $2000 daycare (despite 1 parent being stay at home)
Completely wrong. Mine is about $850 for two people, no kids.
I like the general attitude of that blog, but after going on a reading binge of it a couple years ago I came away with the impression that it's subtly misleading and kinda scummy. Stuff like "how I thrive with no job (by already having a ton of money, and actually having 3 part-time jobs, one of which is getting you to click affiliate links on this very blog)", or "Why are you paying so much for health insurance, really guys, it's cheap (if you're in an exactly perfect life situation, what, are you not?)" Clickbaity humblebragging and condescending wankery mixed with good advice about frugality (some of which is actually useful to people who don't already have a ton of money in the bank), in service of making him money via one of his not-jobs.
> Normal employee copays for a famils are in the $200-$400 per month range.
No. Maybe for one person, not a family. Yes, there are companies that deliver great benefits on health care (I'm at one) but they're exceptional. $2000 seems high, but $200-400 is low by at least half.
If you have great income and you want to retire early by saving on some big expenses, MMM probably has some good advice for you.
If you are relatively poor and you're trying to figure out how to pay off your student loans, fix your beater that you need to get to the office, and afford health insurance, while having essentially zero money left over, MMM's advice is essentially worthless. It's like telling a homeless guy with no jacket, "Why are you cold? Just put a jacket on."
$150/month for day care or camps or lessons or whatever...
$500/month for health insurance for family [my portion, the company has a plan]
$1500 month in rent or mortgage
$1000/month in groceries
That's just under $38,000 per year. I make more now, but we lived very comfortably when I made $80,000 per year (before tax).
Unless you make $250k+/year there, it's not worth being in these areas.
Not even at 50k a year for essential expenses. It's doable. At 100k I'd have pretty much no financial worries, and at 200k, I'd have better problems to worry about. :)
Sure, you are probably going to need 2 incomes if that's the kind of lifestyle you want but don't kid yourself its some sort of bare minimum.
Growing up my family of five (three kids, two parents) somehow managed to live in a two bedroom apartment with one car and played in public parks and other public facilities for entertainment. We wore hand-me-downs and had little in terms of "stuff," we didn't have any room to store it anyways.
I am much happier I grew up without excess toys/objects/items as most of our play was centered around imagination. Children are really good at entertaining themselves if left to their own devices. It also made me appreciate what I did have.
Basically, I didn't grew up even remotely in squalor or anything like that. It would have been nice to have my own bedroom but it wasn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
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My family now has two incomes/jobs but only one car, we share a car ride to work, one drops the other off in the morning and picks them up in the evening. it's kinda annoying at times. I want to get a second car but every time I run the numbers in my head I can't justify the huge added expense just to alleviate a little bit of annoyance/inconvenience.
So anyways, you can do with a lot less if you actually wanted to. "This is how much I spend" isn't the same thing as "this is how much I am required to spend."
lessons = entertainment
kids activities = entertainment
None of those are some sort of bare bones living expenses. They are nice to haves if you can afford it.
afterschool care = not required if one parent stays home or works a different shift.
And yes, I'm going to be normative here and suggest as a society we do an awful lot of offloading our kids into the care of others. And if we're doing that, why the hell did we have them in the first place?
If you need bare bones supervision for your school age children you can get that at the Boys and Girls club and similar programs. Their summer program was around $1 a day per kid when I went.
As for entertainment spending (Netflix, cell phones, et c), it's nothing next to (especially) housing and (even cooked at home) food. Cutting all of that wouldn't get us down to a secure, responsible income level with only one parent working.
I really wish it were easy to find nice, well-built, efficient, modestly sized houses in neighborhoods where you don't have ex-cons living next to you, vicious dogs running loose, etc. That just doesn't seem to be the case.
I just did the math with my past bills and, amortized, I spend about $200 total on utilities a month. That's water, electricity, and oil. I have no special upgrades to my house. It gets fairly cold here. I have the aforementioned 2000 square foot (which I consider big) 75 year old house. I keep the heat on 68 when we are home. It gets hot in the summer and we use window air units.
My grandma's house had exactly the same problem, the roof was rotted and actually had a hole in it, you could see the outside from the inside. She didn't have the wherewithal to get it fixed though, unfortunately. She would just put down buckets to catch the water when it rained.
All houses need regular roof maintenance!
Which is better, having your son be the salutatorian of the average school district in a suburb nobody's ever heard of, or having him be 75/350 in an amazing school district in a suburb nobody's ever heard of?
School district quality matters of course but I think it's overblown when everybody thinks they need to live in the best school district within a 50-mile commute from the job they ended up with more or less randomly.
You're the one not making any substantive arguments by just calling it "shaming"
No, you don't need $150 cable packages and $200 cellular packages. I don't have those myself. My cellphone bill with Ting is about $30/month for myself, and I got my 3-year-old phone on Ebay used.
And no, you don't need a 4000sf home. But most people do want a decent home in a decent, low-crime neighborhood. The problem is that it's very hard to afford that on a single income, even after you cut out extravangances like $150 cable packages.
The fundamental problem is that the rent is too damn high.
https://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-are-1000-sq...
- 2 paid for cars, one has 200k miles on it and is sitting dead in the driveway.
- a 1200 square foot house outside of town, not in a nice area. It's the cheapest house I could find and the only one I could afford.
- Internet.
- Cell phone.
- No cable, no Netflix, very little dining out (always somewhere cheap) and no other debts other than mortgage.
I have a decent income for the area I'm in, and still barely get by on a single income. I really don't understand how other people are making it. I'm either much worse off than I think or most people are just doing so much better.