I must be doing something wrong... We spent approx. $67,500 in 2012. Not sure what you'all are counting as personal expenditures. I counted food, personal hygene products, utiltities, insurance of all kinds, car gas, RE tax, tithe and gifts, and repairs. We are totally debt free, but have 5 kids so maybe that sucking noise i hear is the kids
2 are on their own for the most part 2 in college and 1 in HS
Assuming you know basic arithmetic, I doubt you are doing anything wrong.
The kid thing may be a significant factor. I've never felt motivated to micro-track my budget, but I only have two accounts that spending money comes out of, so I just add up the withdraws from those two accounts, and adjust for anything that was reimbursed to us, or that was transferred to another account (my annual IRA contributions).
My spending hasn't really changed much at all over the past nine years. Property tax and HI have increased, mortgage has decreased (ARM), but kids have been leaving the nest, so I suspect that has had a mitigating effect on my personal inflation rate.
I also think one needs to budget (I call it 'phantom spending') for things that are bought occasionally. Cars are the big one for us. They are paid for, so you won't see any deduction in any account, but roughly every ten years, I'll be spending roughly $20,000, times two for our two cars. So that's roughly$4,000/year, that isn't 'spent', but essentially it is. I add it to my number.
I'll bet many people don't include that - but where does the money come from when they buy a car? I don't bother with other things (new roof, furnace, AC, water heater, driveway, appliances, etc) - I tend to try to spread those out, and tackle one of those categories every year or so. It averages out, and is fairly small %.
BTW, I won't share my number here. I see no point (other than curiosity) to these many threads about what others spend on this or that. I'm not a sheep, I don't really care what others do in this regard. I will do what works for me, and that can be very different from what works for someone else. What's the point in comparing? The point is to find a way to be happy within your means. If not, find a way to adjust one or the other or both. What else is there?
-ERD50