Money Matters
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Budget
My husband and I got married last year and after the wedding stopped budgeting for a while. We've been trying to get back on track and get to $15,000 in savings.
Health insurance and retirement is taken out before we recieve our checks so i'm not including that.
Income // $3340
$975.00 Rent (includes water/trash/heat)
$350.00 Groceries
$150.00 Eating out
$220.00 Gas (husband drives for work)
$260.00 Car ins
$65.00 Cell phone
$45.00 electricity
$55.00 Internet
$30.00 Misc (copays/hulu/netflix)
$140.00 Car payment
$200.00 fun money
$850.00 to savings
Savings currently $3500.00
No kids, no student loans or any other debt besides our car. Hows it look? Any suggestions?
Re: Budget
I definitely agree with this. We shopped around right after we got married, and went with Geico. We're paying about $415 every 6 months ($69.13 a month goes into a checking account that I have for accruals for bills that we pay once or twice a year). That's for a 2010 sports car and a 2002 cavelier.
TTC since June 2012
Looks good to me. I would suggest re-evaluating your car insurance too, although I know rates vary greatly by location. Yours is more than twice what I pay. Have you considered dropping comprehensive coverage on your 2002 and going with collision insurance only? If the car isn't worth much more than what your deductible would be to file a claim, then it might make sense to stop paying for the coverage. I dropped my comprehensive policy when my care was over 100,000 and ten years old, and put the extra savings into a new car fund each month.
Are you looking to cut back? You could likely save on groceries by clipping coupons, meal planning, and shopping the sale ads.
@MrNibbles
Two cars and a motorcycle. The car we have a loan on requires a certain amount of insurance until its paid off which alone with save us about $100.00. The other reason its high is because we're young and live in the state with the one of the highest car ins rates. We check about once a year to switch to have it lowered. This reminds me its about time to check around again. Thanks!
Our cars are a 2006 and a 2007 so they're worth much more than what our deductable is (I think its $500)
We've never couponed before so maybe i'll give that try as well.
TTC since June 2012
The food/eating out looks like it might be a little high. If it fits and it's something important to you, it's not a huge deal.
I know you didn't include this in your post as your income is after retirement contributions, but I would be interested in what percentage you are saving for retirement. If it's not at least 10%, then I suggest you work on increasing that.
Really the only places to cut would be fun money, groceries (coupons and buy generic), and choosing one or the other between Hulu and Netflix.
Another thing to consider is to lower your car payment by doing a refi of the car loan to get a lower rate and therefore a lower monthly payment. The caveat here is to not ADD back anymore time to the loan term because that would defeat the purpose. So if, for instance, you have 38 months left on your existing loan, refi only if you can do it for 38 months or less. Possibly by doing this, you could release yourself from that mandatory car insurance requirement you have on the current loan and also save on money for auto insurance. Also, if the loan has a prepayment penalty, you may or may not want to incure this fee - it just depends on the math.