I honestly can't tell if you are being serous or not. $2,000/month entertainment is included in "bare one expenses to exist?" No. That's pretty extravagant.
Sure, you are probably going to need 2 incomes if that's the kind of lifestyle you want but don't kid yourself its some sort of bare minimum.
Growing up my family of five (three kids, two parents) somehow managed to live in a two bedroom apartment with one car and played in public parks and other public facilities for entertainment. We wore hand-me-downs and had little in terms of "stuff," we didn't have any room to store it anyways.
I am much happier I grew up without excess toys/objects/items as most of our play was centered around imagination. Children are really good at entertaining themselves if left to their own devices. It also made me appreciate what I did have.
Basically, I didn't grew up even remotely in squalor or anything like that. It would have been nice to have my own bedroom but it wasn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
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My family now has two incomes/jobs but only one car, we share a car ride to work, one drops the other off in the morning and picks them up in the evening. it's kinda annoying at times. I want to get a second car but every time I run the numbers in my head I can't justify the huge added expense just to alleviate a little bit of annoyance/inconvenience.
So anyways, you can do with a lot less if you actually wanted to. "This is how much I spend" isn't the same thing as "this is how much I am required to spend."
I'm going to disagree with you hear. The list provided is absolutely non-essential. I mean, are you kidding me? To believe otherwise absolutely astonishes me. We think of it as an extravagance if we pay $50/month for our daughter to take a dance class. $200/month maybe, if all the kids are in a single class of some sort, but $2000?! Not happening, even if we could afford it.
Daycare is not entertainment. Daycare is what stops Social Services from taking away your kids. (Which wouldn't happen in the 70s, between multi-generational families, and less moral panic about unattended twelve-year-olds.)
Uh, daycare wasn't on the list. After school care was. Different animal.
And yes, I'm going to be normative here and suggest as a society we do an awful lot of offloading our kids into the care of others. And if we're doing that, why the hell did we have them in the first place?
Since when was the alternative to piano lessons and dance class leaving your kids unsupervised?
If you need bare bones supervision for your school age children you can get that at the Boys and Girls club and similar programs. Their summer program was around $1 a day per kid when I went.
Totally agree. Besides, in many states kids are allowed to supervise younger kids starting somewhere between 9 and 12. I.e., if your oldest is 9 in Utah, you can indeed legally leave them home alone with their siblings.
That should be the baseline for where you think. Not some crazy fantasy land with a $2000 mortgage and $2000 daycare (despite 1 parent being stay at home)
MMM's posts are all from the perspective of someone who: 1) has a paid off house, 2) has a lot of money in the bank, can get a job with benefits easily on short-ish notice and has no-one with chronic illnesses in his household (= incredibly low health insurance costs). He also gains all kinds of savings by not being dependent on a 9-5, like having enormous choice in housing location, lower transportation expenses, and so on. This is the end state of someone who's made it, and spending at that level's not realistic for a family that's still working, because their spending is necessarily much higher due to having fewer options to reduce costs.
I like the general attitude of that blog, but after going on a reading binge of it a couple years ago I came away with the impression that it's subtly misleading and kinda scummy. Stuff like "how I thrive with no job (by already having a ton of money, and actually having 3 part-time jobs, one of which is getting you to click affiliate links on this very blog)", or "Why are you paying so much for health insurance, really guys, it's cheap (if you're in an exactly perfect life situation, what, are you not?)" Clickbaity humblebragging and condescending wankery mixed with good advice about frugality (some of which is actually useful to people who don't already have a ton of money in the bank), in service of making him money via one of his not-jobs.
> Normal employee copays for a famils are in the $200-$400 per month range.
No. Maybe for one person, not a family. Yes, there are companies that deliver great benefits on health care (I'm at one) but they're exceptional. $2000 seems high, but $200-400 is low by at least half.
I agree. MMM is completely unhelpful for someone who is not already in a great position.
If you have great income and you want to retire early by saving on some big expenses, MMM probably has some good advice for you.
If you are relatively poor and you're trying to figure out how to pay off your student loans, fix your beater that you need to get to the office, and afford health insurance, while having essentially zero money left over, MMM's advice is essentially worthless. It's like telling a homeless guy with no jacket, "Why are you cold? Just put a jacket on."
I am a 3rd year dev living on 70k income. Wife works >20 hrs part time. 2 kids. I live in the US between the Rocky and the Appalachian mountains where the cost of living is reasonable. Things are tight, but solid.
$800/mo rent (4 bedroom house, .7 acres)
$800/mo debt, 2 car payments
$200/mo gas
$500/mo savings
$600/mo groceries
$500/mo utilities, phone, internet, streaming
$250/mo car, life insurance
Not even at 50k a year for essential expenses. It's doable. At 100k I'd have pretty much no financial worries, and at 200k, I'd have better problems to worry about. :)
$2000/month for health insurance for family.
$2000+/month in rent or mortgage
$1000/month in groceries
And we are up to $100,000 a year in just the bare one expenses to exist.
Maybe add some retirement savings, a vacation for a week or two, maybe some college savings, and we are into $200,000+ territory.