Very interesting scenario, hence my questions. thnx!

Where are you guys getting health insurance? I work as a teacher so mine is covered but for my wife and 3 kids I pay over $600 a month. ($30 co-pays and $6000 per person deductable)

Something’s wrong here?

For the internet, I have cable through Comcast ($43.00 per month).

On the phone, I have a combination of MagicJack for home use (internet phone) and a Tracphone prepaid plan for minimal use when away from home. The MJ is $20 per year and the Tracphone gets tanked up once a year for about $100. MJ takes some getting used to but the sound quality has been really good. I’m in my second year using that.

I saw a new internet phone company just recently called Ooma. With their equipment you can make calls over the internet without a pc using a regular phone, but you do need a high speed cable connection. The price for their box was $199 at Costco but after that, no monthly phone bills except for the cable.

Clearly, I’m not much of a talker. I mainly use it as my voicemail box and I don’t answer calls on the cell at home, instead returning calls on my landline while at home. (I use a pingo.com calling card access number for long distance, 2 cents per minute. If I am out of the house and I need to make or receive a call, i use the cell. But often even there I am someplace with a landline, and I just read the incoming phone # and use the landline where I’m at (with the pingo access number if necessary).

I never thought of clothing for presents. I have certain family-like friends who insist on buying me presents, never know what to get, and like being able to have a list of things I would like. I am going to put clothing on that list.

Y’all are awesome with the utilities compared to me:
* keeping the thermostat at 55F in the winter and 80/72F in the summer – We keep ours at 65F in winter and 75 in summer
* heat with wood we get for free – We heat with natural gas and do not have a wood stove or fireplace.
* wash two full loads a week; never use the dryer – We wash six(!) full loads a week and never use the dryer
* gas stove; bulk cooking – same here
* turn off unused lights, TV, but still have ghost loads – same here
* CFLs in most fixtures – same here

I’m probably not going to adopt any of your improvements to my current practices except that I have been trying re-wearing certain clothes more often.

It makes sense that you don’t use a budget; you don’t need to because your expenditures are so much lower than your earnings. For people living paycheck to paycheck, or nearly so, a budget can be a big help in avoiding bounced check fees and in making sure enough money gets saved. Those folks need to include irregular expenses in their budget.

Larger and larger chunks of my budget are going toward irregular expenditures and I love knowing that these things are all budgeted for and taken care of: car maintenance and repairs; house maintenance; next car fund; expensive fun things like trips, electronics, and furniture; insurance; medical expenses (I don’t have many but realized that I should save in case something big comes up); and house renovation.

Keep posting, yours is quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs to read each day.

Clothes is mostly acquired through xmas and birthday presents. I’m finally beginning to understand why my parents appreciated getting socks for xmas. I do not have a job that requires dry cleaned clothes.

Utilities (electricity, gas, water) are done by keeping the thermostat at 55F in the winter and 80F in the summer (except bedtime when I put it down to 72F) using fans instead of AC. In the winter we heat with wood, we get for free on craigslist. We wash two full loads a week. We never use the dryer. We have a gas stove and generally cook for several days and use the microwave to reheat. We turn the light off when we leave a room. We also turn the TV off when we are not watching it. We still have ghost loads e.g. DVR box and various adapters (and the fridge which I’d like to turn off). We have CFLs in most fixtures.

We have one compact car that it essentially driving(rolling?) 40mph for DW’s commute for 20 miles. I commute by bike. We’re actually looking into moving closer to her work. That way she can do a 3 mile commute by bike. My bike commute would then turn into a 40 mile round trip, but I like to believe I’m tough Perhaps, DW willing, we could lose the car altogether.

There has been some surprises. Mostly of the stupid kind – the dog eating xylotol chewing gum or uncooked beans going through the garbage grinder and then clogging up the drains. These are paid out of savings. I consider them extraordinary expenses. Nothing is allocated for extraordinary expenses. If something comes up I’ll just sell 100 shares of something (or more accurately put less into the broker account/funds). The budget only shows items we see every month.

Hockey expenses (which are much lower than when I began and didn’t know how to get things on the cheap — I used to pay $7/per game, now I pay a one time fee of $100/year + 3x$100 for the leagues) are generally paid quarterly. If I spread them out, I’m probably down to $40-50/month.

In fact I do not maintain a budget. I had to ask DW for the details and then add them up. Differencing with income matches the money I see on the investment side.

I am NOT in the 12% tax bracket. Probably more like the 25%. However, this is the marginal tax rate or what is paid on the LAST dollar earned. 12% is what you get when you take all taxes and divide by gross income. (Consider a funded 401k, and two funded IRAs – it actually brings down taxable income by quite a bit – then there’s the fact that capital gains and qualified dividends are only taxed by 15%).

Most food is bought in serious bulk. We mostly shop for staples at the local Aldi equivalent. Fruit/vegetables are best acquired as loss leaders eating what’s on sale.

Rent is the biggest eyesore. Our house is too big for our needs with parts of it unused. We’re currently looking for 1bd/1bath in the sub-$1000 range, concurrently with the RV plan.

Do you not allocate $x each month for future expenses, or just plan to “borrow” from your portfolio in that event?

I bet no one got your deviation joke.