Fixing My Budget On My Way to $2M

I’ve realized that the more money I make, the less I want to spend. It isn’t that I have lost the urge to shop… it’s that the larger purchases that matter most in life come with the most financial risk–a house, for instance, may be purchased for a certain price–but it’s only “yours” if you can afford to make he payments for 30 years and continue paying taxes afterwards.

I’d really like to get my budget under $4000 a month, but this seems impossible. At the moment I’m spending about $6000 a month, so cutting it to $4000/month for the rest of the year would be a substantial accomplishment. Here’s how I’m going to do it:

Item BUDGET Current
Rent $1,270 $1,231
Financial $300 $219
Childcare $1,200 $1,200
Food $500 $719
Kid Stuff $150 $98
Phone $120 $115
Cable/Internet $60 $55
Gas/Electric $50 $52
Car $250 $273
Shopping $150 $1,068
Gifts $50 $111
Home $75 $72
Personal Care $75 $98
Health $50 $87
Entertainment $50 $60
Travel $200 $159

The above plan puts me at spending about $4550 a month! That’s still quite a lot and I don’t even think it is doable. I don’t see where else I can cut. The current amount in the average of my spending thus far this year. Obviously shopping is quite high, so I need to figure out how to seriously stop shopping so much! I’m going on a spending hiatus for September and trying to only return things and buying nothing new (other than what I’ve purchased already this month–a few books for my son, within budget.)

This is all so I can try to start saving more each month, to get to $1,500,000 in networth by the time I turn 38 (end of 2021.) If I stick to the above budget and keep my job, it’s possible.

$1.5M isn’t that significant… I need $4M to reach my “FI” goal (financial independence) — with $4M the rest of my life will feel ok as I’ll have the security needed to do what is right for my career and my family (well, ideally $4M plus a house, but I’m going to say $2M plus a house in this case, since we can always sell our house, and my husband’s networth will hopefully grow a bit over time too, to provide some more cushion.)

I just wonder if I can stick to the above plan. I don’t even know what I buy, but I spend a fortune on shopping! I’ve spent $4472 on Amazon year-to-date (yikes!)

Screen Shot 2019-09-04 at 10.41.10 PM

Also, I just realized I had some app subscriptions that were auto renewing that I didn’t know about! Cancelled those. Have no room in this budget for random “oops I just renewed for another year” in my apps.

Can I really go on a “no spend” September (and maybe rest of year!?!) Or at least a low-spend September ($150 shopping budget is pretty much nothing… especially since I’ll be purchasing a new iphone this month (I’m still using the 5 SE!) and need to account for the payment plan.)

I probably need some work done on my car… which means the $250 a month budget is going to be tough. Maybe I’ll hold off on the work for a month or two as long as it’s safe to drive.

Welp, I’ll report back Oct 1 re: how well I’ve tracked to my spending goals this month. I’d really like to get this under $4000/month, but that just doesn’t seem realistic.

 

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One thought on “Fixing My Budget On My Way to $2M”

  1. “I don’t even know what I buy.” This is another reason I don’t like leaving my financial recording to a compilation site. I still log in everything manually to Quicken, so I have this total awareness of every cent leaving my account. This forces you to have a reckoning with each individual expense instead of just seeing totals.
    Norm recently posted..Ridinkulous Quarterly Expenses: Q2 2019

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