Thursday, May 12, 2016

Budget Porn: Our 2015 Spending

In the halcyon days of 2012, when this blog was bright eyed, and idealistic, we wrote net worth and budget posts every month. They were my favorite, as the posts basically wrote themselves. I just cut and pasted an image out of my budget spreadsheet, talked about the categories we did well in and where we did poorly, and poof, all of a sudden I had eight hundred words on truly personal finance: my personal finances. Eventually, when people we knew in real life started reading the blog, we took all those posts down, along with any others that crossed the line into the gauche. It felt weird that some friends and family knew our exact net worth or how much we spent on groceries and medical care.

Still, they were some of our most popular posts. It didn't hurt that I could play off of our natural inclination towards voyeurism, and could craft some click bait by titling the posts as "Budget Porn". It's tempting to pull back the curtains and see how our neighbors live, especially in their financial lives. How often do we get to see someone else's paycheck, their checking account, maybe even their investment portfolio?

Well, today you get a little piece of that. While I don't like publishing a post like this once a month, and I certainly don't like the way it made me feel to have our income and net worth out there for anyone to see, I suppose seeing our expenses once a year is fine.


For a little more context, here's how these numbers compare to 2014.


Travel: Once again, travel was our largest single expense...which is just how we like it. If you had to pick just one thing, and all that. Most of this expense line was for our two trips to Europe, which travel hacking only covered partially: flights and some hotels, but not AirBNBs, trains, food, or beer. Some of it is for smaller trips out to California to see family, too, and big chunks of the 2015 expenses are actually for travel in 2016. (For example, did I mention that I'm typing this on my phone in our first night in Istanbul? Paid for back in 2015.) Still, at nearly seven grand, we spent about twenty cents out of every dollar on travel. That doesn't seem sustainable long term.

Date Night and Restaurants, since they're kind of the same thing: We eat out a lot, at least compared to some frugal folks. Chipotle, despite the lingering threat of food poisoning, is still by far our most popular takeout. (Pro tip: get a burrito bowl, and ask for two tortillas on the side. You get more of everything due to the natural human desire to fill plates or bowls, enough to split with two people, and making tiny, bite sized tacos with a fork and ripped off pieces of tortilla is really fun, too. Oh, and if you ask for a bunch of lettuce, you get more veggies while also covering up the guacamole, and sometimes they forget to charge you the extra couple bucks. You now know all our Chipotle tricks.)

We also like going out to restaurants, so combined with our love for takeout, these make up a sizable chunk of our annual budget: over $4,800, or about 14% of all the money we spent in 2015. Seems like a lot.

Still, this is quality time spent with Mrs. Done by Forty, and time saved from cooking and cleaning up. While we could definitely save some coin in this area, I might look other places first.

Groceries: Despite spending more on dinners out, our grocery budget has gone up by a grand this year over last. I suspect the reason is just lifestyle creep: we're no longer driven by the desire to be incrementally more frugal, so we have gone in the other direction, and are spending more in a lot of areas. But on a more granular level, we are doing two things: we are buying better groceries rather than just focusing on sale items, and we are hanging out with friends more and, thus, buying a lot more six packs and bottles of wine. A small price to pay for eating better food and playing board games a few times a week, right?


Well, it is 3 am here in Turkey and we are in full on jet lag mode. But I am glad to write again, even on a little phone, and even about something as worrisome as sharing your expenses with the world. I never know how to feel about our spending. Are we still too frugal? Too focused on financial goals alone? Or, given that we don't have a mortgage, are we just like any other family on the block, and probably spending too much?

I am torn between justifying all our dollars spent, thinking that we are "doing it right", and, on the other hand, feeling some shame about spending so much on luxuries. Who needs that many burrito bowls and pizzas after all?

But these are questions for future Brian. Present Brian needs to get some sleep and then deal with the odd AirBNB message he got from his host, explaining that he put us in the wrong room, and would we mind moving to a smaller place without a balcony? Something to deal with in the morning. For now, sleep.


*Photo is from Mike Mozart at Flickr Creative Commons.

19 comments:

  1. Turkey - fun!!! I think in your heart of hearts you know what areas you need to adjust in. I know that, at least for us, God gives us a little tug on our hearts when we're overspending (or underspending) in an area. :-)

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    1. Hey there Laurie! Yeah, we kind of know where our trouble areas are, if we're honest with ourselves. On some level, we feel wasteful if we spend so much more than we used to.

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  2. Wow, you guys have been taking some amazing trips! A little jealous here...haha! Hope you guys had a great time. Cool to see Budget Porn make a come back...I do like taking a peek at other people's budgets =)

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    1. Hey Andrew! Brad at Richmond Savers has put us on this path so he deserves the credit. We are happy to be taking these trips before we settle down with a family, which might be pretty soon.

      And you're not alone -- I think we all like seeing how our peers spend and save.

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  3. Wow that's cool you're in Turkey, would love going there one day. Very neat seeing your budget porn, I enjoyed reading it. :)

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    1. Thanks, Tawcan. We really liked Istanbul -- very pretty country, and we'd never been a place with Muslim prayers throughout the day. Definitely a part of the world we're happy to have seen.

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  4. Nice to do a really yearly round up. I get your reasons for taking off the monthly updates but personally I wouldn't be bothered if friends and family read mine. Some people will earn/spend more than me and some will do less... If people get jealous or judgemental because of that they can get over it!

    Also I think it would be good to break down the taboo of talking about this kind of stuff on a more local level.

    Having said that, no one I know reads the blog that I'm aware of at least. Hah!

    Despite spending a lot on travel you are getting great bang for your buck. It seems to me you are in a great position and can afford it so just crack on enjoying life. Your overall budget still seems very reasonable at 34K despite lots of travel and a fair bit of eating out and a few luxuries and just goes to show two key points:

    Other people spending far more than this sort must be extremely wasteful

    Icing the mortgage really helps with keeping your budget down!

    Enjoy Turkey :)

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    1. I hear you, FIREStarter. On some level, we shouldn't care whether people know our spending levels, net worth, etc. Being transparent and holistic is a good way to be.

      Of course, we both blog anonymously for certain reasons, too.

      I think the reason we don't like sharing the information publicly, at least not that much, is that it's a one way street. It'd be one thing if my friends and family were sharing this kind of information in kind...

      And yes, having the mortgage iced definitely makes our monthly/annual numbers look good. But that's all changing soon -- more to come on that.

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  5. Wow - super impressed! Its true - I love to look at other bloggers actual numbers. Its inspiring and super easy to compare what they are doing to what we are doing. So far, I've just used percentages but I might do a yearly round-up like this for the end of 2016. Buying groceries has always been a challenge for us. We spend about $700 a month for a family of 3. Its not pretty, but no matter how hard we try, we can't get that number lower.

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    1. I hear you on the groceries. Maybe the answer is that we don't want to lower the price that much...hidden costs in everything we do.

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  6. Very impressive! My wife and I are actively trying to cut expenses right now. The last two months have been awesome. Besides the main bills (mortgage, electricity, phone, etc) we spent less than $800 for food, gas, toiletries, etc. Annually we are looking at less than $12,000 which I think is pretty remarkable. Savings rate looked real good.

    After looking at your charts, I feel like we need to do this!

    Thanks!

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    1. Whoa! 12,000 annually for a couple? That's fantastic.

      Cutting expenses can be a great way to get recurring savings. Frugality is just one tool, but it is, for some people, the only one they need in the bag.

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  7. Our spending is incredibly different from yours. Our total expenses for the year were $62K which included a $20K remodel and $14K in childcare expenses. If we didn't do the home remodel, we actually may have had a thrifty year, but I don't regret living in a much nicer space.

    Also, I love the budget porn.

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  8. Thanks, Hannah! We may be joining you in the world of housing costs and child expenses soon. Kids and, maybe, a new house are on the horizon. I fully anticipate our annual expenses may go up as we age, which makes the whole concept of early retirement somewhat tricky.

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  9. I totally want to hear about Turkey! That's been on my bucket list for a looooong while. How is your health insurance so low? I'd guess HDHP, but still seems small for annual...I need to know your secrets!

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    1. Turkey was beautiful. The ferry ride to the Prince's Islands was surprisingly awesome...got to feed divebombing seagulls right out of my hand from the side of the boat, and one of the islands doesn't allow motor vehicles so everyone gets around on bike or horse. It is rad.

      HDHP for me, and my wife is covered under the university student health plan. That will change in a year, but not too dramatically. Two young people on a HDHP is cheap, and my company puts money into our HSA for this plan, which technically means we make a few hundred bucks on our health insurance in stead of paYing out.

      If we have an event though, then we will have a sizable bill. Risk I am willing to take at this stage.

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    2. Oh, and our company does a healthy living program which reduces premiums if you don't smoke, have good cholesterol and BMI numbers, etc. That helps bring the cost down.

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  10. I don't see any home expenses (mortgage or rent) , does that mean you live in a paid off home with no property taxes? In fact, I don't see any taxes at all in your list.

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    1. Hey there, Newman Family. We paid off our home back in 2013, so that's why we don't have any line item for a mortgage or rent.

      We still have to pay property taxes, of course. I just didn't include those here (roughly $800 annually), nor do we include our other taxes (or our savings/investing figures). We used to, but stopped a while back. Enterprising individuals could roughly figure out our income if we shared our federal income tax & pre-tax investment figures, so we keep those hidden.

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