Monthly cost - Family of 4

It's the new year and we've decided that we need to get our finances in order. Whenever I tell people how much it costs us to live as a family of 4 (two young kids nearly 2 & 4) eveyone is stunned. Including all of our bills, loan repayments and saving plan (christmas club $100/month) it is between $5,600 - $7,000. Am I completely off the mark or does this seem reasonable. What is your monthly cost of living if you don't mind sharing something personal.

Our monthly bills are: Mortgage (plus extra payments), car loan, food, petrol, child care, phone, internet, mobile, work insurance, health insurance, our allowance ($200/month).

Other bills are: gas, electricity, water, car insurance/reg x2, rates, building & contents insurance, motorbike rego & insurance, dog groomer, ambulance, work registration, life insurance, car services, easter, christmas, mothers/fathers day & family birthdays.

The kids do swimming lessons.

So am I on the right track or way off in the field somewhere, LOL!! I am in process of trying to become a cash family. We've been so lucky and I've never had to budget before so I am a bit confused on how to do it.

Thanks everyone,
Dan.

subbing because I'm trying to take on the finances in our family. DH's "budget" (read spreadsheet where he wrote what he thinks we spend) seems incredibly out of date and off target! and makes zilch sense!

We have rent, food, play money, petrol, nappies, cigarettes , etc
Electricity, telstra, and pay our rego and insurance once a year and bundled to get it cheaper.

Our rent is $390.00 so $1560 a month
We spend $450.00- $500 a month on food, $30a week on petrol so $120 a month $200 on smokes a month ( Hubby) and about 1 or 2 packs of nappys for $15 for 50 ( DS is ttraining ATM)

$2410 approximate a month. We always have extra food and money leftover to save, we travel to bali at least once a year for a month at a time

And I pay bills as we get them, usually elect is $450 for three months and telstra is $100 a month.

We have no debt and are still waiting for our second child though....

Also will need to add $150 a month for childcare as of feb this year

Might be able to give you a better reply if you break the costs down more. ie, individual costs for your mortgage, food, fuel, dog groomer, etc.

For our family of 5 we generally have:
Mortgage #1 (OUR house) - $1000 p/f
Car (including fuel, servicing etc - salary packaged) - $300-400 p/f (not sure of exact amount as some of that is paid 'pre-tax', some post-tax).
Food (including nappies, dog food for two dogs, cat food for two cats, kitty litter, etc) - $300-400 p/f
Electricity - $30-40p/f (have solar hot water, so this may be different to what others spend)
Gas - $10 p/f
Mobile (only have one, and no home phone, never exceed plan) - $35 p/m - approx $17.50 p/f
Internet (prepaid wireless) - $130 p/a - approx $5p/f
Motorbike (including rego, fuel, servicing, etc) - $20 p/f

So approx $2000 p/f or $4000 per month.
Obviously if you have a bigger mortgage, or more vehicles, etc your figure will be different.

[Note: I didn't include Mortgage #2 or the investment costs, because they didn't seem relevant to your question, but they are extra costs we also have]

If you have all the individuals items budgeted - the next step is to go through them and figure out which are needs and which are wants. Sometimes this is obvious: Food - need. Foxtel - want. Othertimes not so much: is the second car a need or a want??? (It is OK to have wants, just be honest about what they are).

Once you have figured out your needs and wants go through them and see where you can and cann't or aren't willing to cut costs. Ie, food is a need, but do you really need hienz tomatoe sauce?? (I do :D ). Is the dog groomer a need or a want? Do you need to spend that much every month or could it be scaled back to every other month or you do it yourself?
There are no right or wrong answers to this - but if you are trying to save money somewhere, that means cutting back or forgoing some of the things you usually have.

You might notice I didn't have alot of the expenses you have - ie health insurance - because we don't have it (personal choice). I also didn't include things like presents - because that varies depending on the money situation at the time and the item we are buying. Also our personal spending money isn't itemised because we decide that on a week to week basis. When we were struggling financially we did budget all these things, now we don't - we just ensure we have put at least $1000 in savings each fortnight (ie, extra repayments onto our mortgage - ontop of the $1000 repayment).

We only have 3 members, but are expecting number 4:

Per month:
Rent - $1000
Nappies (daycare wont use cloth) - ??
Petrol - ?? (only one car and it is DH's - so he know all that stuff. I don't drive)
Phone/Net package - $80ish by memory
Phone calls - $2.50 this month, 50c last month (ha, losers)
Daycare - $280 a week, so, 1120 for a 4 week month
Food - Recently went up...about $75 a week for fresh produce and $6 a week for bread flour = $324
Electricity - way too high, but this is a rental and EVERYTHING (water, power, cooking etc) is Electric = $215 for 60 days = $107.50
Water - not sure, but pretty good. Can't find a bill atm.
Mobile Phone = $30 a month

So that's minus the all car costs, pet food and water as I am not sure about them. Internet is high coz DH needs the high speed and high dl limit when he's working from home.

Oh yeah there is Health Insurance too, but DH handles all of that according to him. Something insane like $1000 a year.

oh gosh
monthly bills: , food,petrol,mobile,health incurence,so to be child care,loan repayment, kinder aswell,foxtel,internet

others: gas,electricity,water,birthdays,laybys,nappies,clo thes,uniform ( kinder)

our monthly cost is $2700 for a family of three.....with $1700 left over...

i dunno how we do it but we do lol

OMG!!! What am I doing wrong???!!!???!! No wonder people are stunned when i tell them how much ours is.
Mortgage 1776.54
Mortgage 220 (we are paying a bit more each week just to get it down a bit quicker)
Car 335
Kids 40 (a savings account to help our kids with education/first home)
Child Care 756
Food 900
Petrol 300
Phone/Internet 100
VOIP 20
Mobile - Dan 60
Health Insurance 180
ANF 43
Allowance 200
4890.54

Then whatever quarterly bill is due we pay that month. Sadly we do need two cars as my DH must have a car (does a stack of travelling) and I'm a shift worker so he would have to get the kids up to pick me up.
Looks like we are going to have to find ways to chip down things like food/petrol. We have to have good internet for DH's work and that is also why our petrol is so high.
This is going to be harder than I thought.

Ours probably isn't too far off yours, I know that all our income is taken in our budget but we are taking steps to rectify it (ie, getting rid of our private health insurance and world vision etc - we're going backwards every month unfortunately paying for these)

So our expenses are probably around 5 grand a month I suppose - for a family of 5.

Food $800(a month)
Fuel $400
Water $120(Water here sucks big time)
Telstra $470(Home Phone, 2 Mobiles, Internet & Foxtel)
Car Loan $800(04 Prado)
Inrent $180(tv & washing machine)
RAC x 2, Life x 2, Health $700 ( house & car insurance, both life insurances & health insurance)
Declan & Maddison $200(they get that put into there joint account)
Spendings $1,000 (includes DD formula prescription, mine & DH monthly prescriptions.)

TOTAL $4,670

DH has a great paying job whats left over at the moment is paying off the Prado Loan & Building up a deposit for a rental house

I just worked ours out yesterday and for a family of 7 (not including food here as that is very flexible and I can cut that down) is about 3890per month. :shakehead::shakehead:Shocking that our expenses and bills have gotten so high.

Heres to reducing our overheads for 2011 and remember even 50c off that credit card is 50c you dont pay in interest. :D

Dan ours would be pretty similar only we don't consciously save and we don't have PHI anymore.

Per Month
Mortgage -$1963
Electricity - $190
Gas - $45
Phone, Mobile & Net $180
School Fee's - $300
Creche Fee's - $150
Water - $60
Insurance for x2 Cars and House & Contents $140
Rego for x2 Cars $86
Rates $116
(All Utilities I pay weekly, and have a set amount automatically bpayed each week through my net banking, so I never get a bill. Same with rates and creche fee's, school fee's come out fortnightly. Best thing I have ever done. No late fee's then!)
= $2870

Then we have our variables...
Food $170 per week (About $700 for month)
Petrol $150 per week (About $650 per month)

So that equals $4220

We don't have Car loans, and our "BEST" car is a Holden Commodore and is 9 yrs old, but is in excellent condition and well looked after, so I just don't see the sense in paying interest on a new car that will do the same job, but maybe look flasher! I love my Commodore anyway, it is black, my fave car colour anyway! Our second car is just to get DH to work and back each day (a 20 min freeway drive), and is about 12 years old ( a Falcon)....it is nice to know that they are all ours. We bought each of them with cash.

Time for a budget me thinks! I have never "paid ourselves" first in terms of a set savings amount each week, and intend to start doing this starting this month.

Could you consolidate your car and home loans? Might save you a little. Also shop around for the best rates on those loans and switch (only if it isn't going to cost you the earth in exit fees of course).
It's hard isn't it? We are working on cutting our expenses down too. We are saving quite a bit on groceries with having our own veggie garden. Also I've been making an effort to shop around and buy in bulk where I can. I don't buy the kids clothes as I request they get them for birthdays and Christmas and we are lucky enough to get hand me downs for DS as well.
I'm sure you know this but if your DH travels for work and needs high speed internet for work then that is a tax deduction. Or get him to request a fuel card if he hasn't got one.

Best of luck :)

Hi hun,

We are a family of 2 (ttc) and our costs are over $6k a month!!!!! Trying to get it down at the moment though.

I think the big variables here are mortgage / rent costs, childcare costs and motor vehicle costs.

All the other stuff is quite similar for everyone.

Our monthly spend is anywhere from $5.5k to $6.5k, however our mortgage is $2.5k per month so that's a pretty big chunk out of the monthly spend.

Mortgage $1700
Phone/gas/elec/House & car insurances/regos/rates $1200
Food $800
Petrol/Gas $250 (makes a big difference now that we own both cars, and one is on gas)
Childcare $350
DS Swimming/music $100

So, that's $4400.

That's for a family of 3. I'm shocked it's that high actually.

Ours is quite similar to yours and we are only expecting baby #1 shortly! This has a lot to do with our loans and stuff though. We have consciously made the choice to (at the moment) have an expensive house in a good suburb as at the time being we can afford to do this(we think this will be a good investment in the long term). In a few years we plan to sell it and buy a bigger house in a cheaper suburb and drastically reduce our loans. The rest of our costs are quite similar to yours though.

:

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I think the big variables here are mortgage / rent costs, childcare costs and motor vehicle costs.

All the other stuff is quite similar for everyone.

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Maybe not electricity. We spend about $900 a quarter on it, much less in summer. Never worked out how to get it lower, yet I see all these people with teeny tiny electricity bills and I wish I had those :(
Our mortgage is $600 a month, will get lower if we can find a buyer for our current house. We spend about $2500 a month for a family of 5.

True Rumpledlf, I forgot about electricity. I wish our mortgage was $600 per month!!