023 | A Peek at Our Monthly Budget

Have you ever wondered if your budget is in line with other people’s budgets? If you’re unsure if your numbers are normal, I’ll tell you–there’s no such thing as “normal.”

Each individual is different, and what works for one person may not work for you. But if you want an inside look at how we budget our money for our 4-person household, this is the episode for you.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics Discussed

• my family’s budget for 2 adults, 2 children, and our dog

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Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide: https://www.rhothomas.com/start

Wealthyesque, Episode 21 (mentioned personal spending money for couples): https://www.rhothomas.com/how-to-stop-the-money-fights-and-get-on-the-same-page-with-your-spouse-about-money/

Budget template: https://www.rhothomas.com/budget

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The Wealthyesque Community: https://www.rhothomas.com/community

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Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. Welcome back to Wealthyesque.

Happy Friday! How was Thanksgiving?

We haven’t had Thanksgiving yet, but I’m really looking forward to it. I’m a bit sad that we won’t be able to see our family and friends, but we’ll make the most of it.

I’ve gotten some questions about budgeting and if your numbers are right or if your numbers are good, and I don’t think there is any right or wrong or good or bad.

You have to do what works for you. You want a budget that gives you room to spend on things you value but still allows you to make progress on your financial goals.

Ultimately, you want to make sure that your expenses are less than your income. When you’re spending all of your income and then some with no wiggle room, you’re not able to make progress on your financial goals. As we’ve talked about before, if you’re doing the zero-based budget, you want your expenses to equal your income once you’ve done your budget.

I thought that it would be helpful for you to see what we do and that way you can get some ideas and maybe see if there’s anything you might want to change in your budget.

I’m not going through every single line item in our budget, like I’m not going to talk about our tithes and our savings and our charitable giving and that kind of thing. I tell you all a lot but you don’t need all the business, right?

But I will tell you the expenses that I think would be helpful, and in some instances I’ll give you the pre-Covid numbers since some things have changed a lot since Covid-19.

With those caveats, we’re a family of four in Atlanta, Georgia. Two adults, two children, and our dog, and here are our numbers.

Our mortgage payment, which includes our homeowner’s insurance, taxes, etc., is about $1,200. Our house is about 2100 square feet. It’s 4 bedrooms 3 bathrooms but it’s not in the trendy or most popular part of town.

Part of that is not wanting to pay as much as you pay, that premium that you pay to live in certain parts of town and the other part frankly is the safety of my husband and my kids. With all that’s going on in our country, in the United States, we didn’t want to be in an area where we have to worry for my husband’s safety when he walks our dog, so we live in an area where we’re not questioned about whether we belong here, and I feel really good about that.

Our HOA for our community is $75 a month.

Our groceries these days we budget about $600. We don’t spend that much every month but some months we are up there, especially with the kids and me being home and eating all meals here so we keep it higher just in case.

For household items we budget $100 and that’s things that we need for the house that we can’t find at the grocery store. So like we’ll buy things like paper towels and toiletries and stuff like that at the grocery store but for other items that aren’t at the grocery store we will get them either at a non-grocery store or we order them online. We also include subscriptions like Amazon Prime and Disney Plus here. And both of those we pay annually.

We have a line item for our kids, and we budget about $300 a month for that, and it’s anything that we buy or pay for related to the kids including diapers and wipes, new clothes because they’re always growing out of their clothes, that kind of thing.

And as I mentioned for the other categories we don’t always spend this much but sometimes we spend more so we like to have a good amount in there in case we need it.

After our second child was born, we got a housekeeper to come help us clean which has been a godsend and that’s about $200 a month that we spend on that.

Our home alarm, our security system, is $32.50. We use a local company rather than one of the bigger national companies, and we haven’t actually needed them yet but they’ve been super responsive every time we accidentally set the alarm off, so I feel pretty secure, even though they’re not a super big name.

For electricity, we budget $140. We include this amount in our monthly budget because it’s on the higher side of what we’ve spent, but many months, the bill is actually lower. During this pandemic it’s often been a little higher but pre-Covid we might have had some months that were in the $60-65 range.

We pay for natural gas, and we budget about $135 for that. Like the electricity, this is the highest amount that we’ve paid, but many months the bill is actually lower. This past month the bill was $40. But as it gets colder then that cost will go up.

Water and sewer we budget $130, and it’s typically right around there. Sometimes it will be about $100. Where we live and maybe where you live, the bill is calculated based on a tier system by thousands of gallons used, and we fluctuate between two of the tiers, but we always budget for the higher one.

Life insurance for my husband and me is about $50.

Gas for our cars, we typically budget about $300, and it’s been about a third or less of that since the pandemic because I’m barely driving, and although my husband still goes to work every day, we are overall driving significantly less than we were before

For my husband’s loans the minimum payment is $3,000, or actually it’s almost $3,300, and I will be so glad when that’s gone.

We also budget about $200 a month for health and medical expenses, so my therapy sessions are covered here and then if we have something like a doctor’s appointment or a dentist appointment or something where we know we’re going to have to pay a co-pay or something like that then we are sure that that’s covered. Typically we don’t spend the entire $200 each month.

Our internet is $60 a month.

Our cell phone is $35, and I mentioned in a previous episode that my phone is paid for through my job, but my husband has a prepaid phone plan through Total Wireless. He has unlimited talk, text, and 5 GB of data each month and we are very pleased with the service.

I actually had a prepaid plan for years before I started at my firm and really enjoyed it and didn’t have any trouble with it. If you are looking to lower your cell phone bill, I encourage you to look into some of the prepaid plans. Doesn’t have to be the one that we use. I’m not sponsored by them or anything like that, but just look into it because it’s a great way to save some money each month but still get the same level of service.

We budget $250 a month for personal care and that’s things like you know haircuts and going to the salon and things like that. That was pre-Covid, but we haven’t done those things since the pandemic started, so the actual spending for most of this year has been much lower.

For personal spending, we each get $400 a month to spend however we want to, and we started doing that not too long after we got married. It has been really helpful, and I highly recommend it for couples to have just a set amount that you each spend however you want to, no questions asked. And I talked about this on a previous episode, so if you haven’t done that, definitely look into it.

For entertainment, we budget about $200 a month, and we typically would include things like going out to dinner or to an event or something like that. Obviously, we haven’t been going out in those ways lately, but if we order take out or something like that, then we’ll put it in here as well.

Then we’ve got what I call sinking funds. We include a line item for the approximate monthly cost of these expenses even though we don’t pay them monthly because we want to make sure that we have the money accounted for.

So for our pest control, we include $46. We actually pay for pest control quarterly, but the monthly cost will work out to about $46.

Then our car insurance we pay twice a year. That works out to about $115 a month. That used to be much lower until my husband decided to get his fancy SUV, but that’s neither here nor there.

For our dog, we budgeted about $300 a month pre-Covid and was for her food, medicine, annual exam, and her doggie daycare cost. About $200 of that was doggie daycare, and we were taking her twice a week. We pay for the 30-day package upfront, and we pay for that every three or four months or so. The cost of that package works out to about $20 a day.

In addition to these expenses, we have charities that we support, of course we tithe, we save a little, and we contribute to 529s for our kids.

And then beyond that we have a miscellaneous line item, and we use that for once in a while expenses like a wedding or birthday gifts or maybe an unexpected repair or something like that.

Because we’re focused on paying off our debt, we also have a line item for our extra debt payment. We budget how much extra we plan to pay at the beginning of the month, but then when we’re reviewing our spending at the end of the month, any money left over from one of the other line items gets added to the extra payment.

So I mentioned, for example, that we budget $300 for the kids. If we only end up spending $200, the remaining $100 gets added to the extra payment for our debt. We always make sure that once we’re balancing our budget that our expenses equal our income.

We’ve been able to make significant progress having a zero-based budget versus when we didn’t have a zero-based budget and when we didn’t have a budget at all. Having a budget helped us tremendously but specifically the zero-based budget has helped us to make so much more progress on our goals by making sure we’re using all our dollars efficiently.

So that is our monthly budget. I hope that you can pull something from it in managing your own finances and getting a sense for if you feel like your numbers work for you or if you want to make some changes.

If you need to get started with your budget, head to rhothomas.com/budget to download my free budget template. And if you need help implementing a plan for your money, let’s schedule a call to see if coaching might be right for you. Head to rhothomas.com/coaching.

The main takeaway from this episode is that there’s no one-size-fits-all budget. What works for one family may not work for another, and that’s okay. My family’s numbers are by no means the gold standard, but I have found it helpful over the years to see how others manage their money and thought you might find our budget helpful, as well.

That’s it for this week’s episode. Meet me over in our private Facebook community, The Wealthyesque Community, and let’s talk about budgets. Do you have any questions about my budget or how to handle your own? I am all ears.

If you got value from today’s episode, just think of a friend or two who might benefit from this message, and go ahead and share it with them, and if you share on social media or if you just want to connect, I’m @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Full disclosure, I’m most active on Instagram, so come connect with me.

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As we close out friend, I pray that you will find some inspiration in my family’s budget to help you with your own.

I pray that you will take some time go through your budget and make sure it reflects the things you value and helps you move toward your goals.

And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time build wealth and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve

Talk to you later.