What are your monthly living expenses?

[sonew123]

Quote:
Thats what we are facing too-our house and I hate to admit it was 350K came with machines ( catepillar-bobcat- and such) was worth it when Dh bought it but now-it wont sell for 250K if we tried so we are stuck house poor-remember folks it was when the market and business was great and we could easily do it-we cant cut down anymore than we already have. We are going to be here forever so we are sucking it up and fixing issues slowly and this house had ALOT of hidden expensive issues that wasnt found out until it was too late-

 

[teach1rusl]

Gosh...it's kind of depressing that even with no mortgage, no car payments, no cable/sat. television, buying a LOT of generic brands when grocery shopping, etc. my family's expenses are as high as they are...

Insurance, property taxes, electricity, propane, auto fuel and groceries (our biggest monthy expense) add up QUICKLY

 

[Moabite]

terrielacy wrote:

We pay 3.8 cents per kilowatt hour.

We pay 7.8 cents per Kilowatt hour but we just don't have any heavy power users except the clothes drier. This tread has made me aware of blessings I've neglected to count. Thanks!​

 

[purr]

Quote:
ooh, me too debi

 

[Rozzie]

Quote:
New England has some of the highest electric rate in the states. Do you run electric heat or use a lot of hot water from an electric water heater?

I thought ours was kind of high at $350 a month. I put a meter on the barn and found we were using $150 a month out there for lighting, ventilation, and hot water. The remaining $200 on the house is hot water, well pump, a freezer, two refrigerators, and a lot of gadgets.

We do have an electric water heater.. but we take short showers.. ( i make sure of that.. i'm the shower nazi around here...lol)
But... we run a dishwasher.. so... that may be part of it.. but darn..how much electricity do they take?
we also do have an extra fridge running in the basement..(filled with frozen animal food/greens from my garden and left over food and extra frozen eggs i froze to feed them in the winter..etc...)
.. we also have a big cube freezer running too... (more animal food and our extra meat..)
So..i hate to turn those off and lose all that food for my animals..

In the middle of winter..we sometimes get $600 bills... With running a small wall heater for my pigs outside( i dont want them to freeze..*sigh*..) and a heat bulb for the birds.(sometimes).... and another heater in my bedroom.. (cause my room is in a finished basement... and its gets a bit too cold for me sometimes down there.. even though we do have heat vented in..)

But we dont leave lights or t.vs on all the time... they are mostly off all day long..
only turned on a few hours at night.
OOh i forgot to add..our heat is oil.. wonder if our furnace is electric start? must be..

The well pump may be part of it. I just can't recall what their power usage is. Seriously, I'd pay the $26 for a Kill-o-watt. If you identify and can change just one power sucker and change something small then it'll pay for itself. You may also be paying a high electric rate. Call your electric company and ask them what your power rates are per kilowatt hour. Find out if its tiered and at what level it changes.

You "really" want to do some investigating. Meters do sometimes go bad, too. It's possible you have a bad one that is overcharging.

If you want to start another thread specific to electricity, maybe we could brainstorm ideas there.

 

[zazouse]

We have been dept free for 5 years, our monthly bills are.......

Eletric 250
auto insurance 115 broke down in months
Phone and net 85
property taxs 100 broke down in months
total 550

Thats it well except for animal food and staples for us 2.

We raise just about all our own food and may eat out a couple times a year

We paid cash for our last new auto in 2009.

We have always been savers but got no problem turing it loose when we realy want or need something.

 

[nonseq]

Quote:
We pay 7.8 cents per Kilowatt hour but we just don't have any heavy power users except the clothes drier. This tread has made me aware of blessings I've neglected to count. Thanks!

hmmmm......We pay almost 10 cents per kilowatt hour. Our electric bill is $170/month on the budget plan. House is about 1800 sf and our heat is gas.

 

[mandelyn]

We're used to military supplied housing, covering everything but cable. What a shock to go civilian after 10 years! I totally forgot how high electric can be. We've gotten real good about shutting off lights, washing dishes by hand, turning the power strips off at night (computer and all) and paying attention. Our fuel consumption has dropped too, less driving. Animal feed went up, since the Army didn't allow for chickens or more than 2 dogs. Food went up... nothing like commissary prices. We should have moved closer to a post for the PX/Commissary! Cereal has been eliminated for "free" eggs.

We'd like to get to our own land so we can grow more food and set up wind energy or something. And build a house that's not drafty and inefficient. I'm thinking partly underground. Buy land with a hill, and see if we can't have a basement and the first floor under ground, leaving only the top level exposed. My best friend grew up in an underground house and all their heating/cooling was next to nothing.

Who's that survivor dude that lives in Arizona and manages off less than $5,000 a year? We could manage a substantial savings if we could pull that off. Not really a fan of living in a tent and eating termites though.

 

[BarkerChickens]

Our expenses alone are in the low-end of $3-$4k range, but I put a bracket higher since the extra money we get goes to misc and paying off bills that were accumulated when DH was laid off and I was finishing up school. We are trying to pay them off as quick as possible.

It would be extremely difficult to live in the $2-$3k range here! If we had to, I am sure we could do it, but it'd be very tough.

My mortgage is already low ($675/mo...DH bought the house 20 years ago).
Our utilities are ~$150/mo for electric, gas, water, trash (alternates with trash, so we count them as one for monthly budgeting purposes).
Then you add in food, pet food (3 medium-to-large size dogs, 2 cats, 3 rabbits, and 16 hens), two dog prescriptions ~$30/mo, car insurance (car ins is expensive here! We have the good driver discount, discount for being married

, discount for having a science degree, discount for more than 1 vehicle, etc, and we still pay $250/mo), car payment (This is a luxury item, but we really needed a car with good gas mileage for my commute to work. We did buy used though!), gas...in CA...and I commute quite a distance into Orange County, CA for work (and I think my bills are high now! If I lived there, DH and I would both need second jobs!), plus average in for vehicle registration yearly, holiday expenses (T-giving and Xmas dinners, etc...gifts are minimal since we don't have kids), car expenses, haircuts (for me...I do DHs), internet, DirectTV (and we have a basic package), house maintenance/improvements, etc.

I love where I live and DH and I live pretty frugal. But, to live in the outskirts and live cheaply (not in the big city where the mortgage would equal what are total monthly expenses are here!), means that I need to commute into city for work and that requires much more car maintenance, gas, etc. I put about 30,000 miles on the cars per year just in my commute to work. Property taxes for our property are ~$2,000/yr, sales tax is 8.5%-9.5% depending on the area, high car insurance, high state income tax near 10%, etc.

Having lived in other states, I can honestly say that I LOVE where I live, but lets just say that our typically higher than national average wages are much needed to just get by. I think $3-$4K/mo here would be comparable to $2-$3k in most other states.

 

[PineappleMama]

Ours are about 1900... all bills included... 4 check months income is 2088, 5 check months income is 2555.
What's left goes to food, gas, dog food, chicken feed, school supplies, Christmas... all that good stuff.

Currently working on rearranging our food to healthier choices so that's a little weird but we're good.