We do backdoor roths every year, our IRA's always have a 0 dollar balance, until at the end of the first month we transfer 5500 to each account and transfer it to the roths.
I agree with almost everyone says here, just keep in mind that not everything that I post is something that we do or I pressure DW into trying. I am smart enough to know that a happy wife is a happy life
As an example my father was a physician and parents were extremely frugal, my mother and father bought their clothes from kohls or walmart. They never drove cars more expensive then 35k and my mother was always making sure they got the best deal when it came to any purchase over 100$. She raised 4 children and her second job was to make sure that my fathers hard earned dollars stretched as far as possible. My father retired when he was 69, mainly because he was part of the generation that his identity revolved around him being a physician. Nevertheless they retired with quite a bit of money.
For as frugal as they were they did travel 5-6x a year once all the kids were out of the house, but I know they my mother always spent time finding the cheapest price for everything.
I have told DW many times thats its a win if all the kids are in one piece at the end of day, and we do have a cleaning service that we pay 130$ 2x a month. I also help do the laundry, clean up after the kids and clean the house almost every day when I get home from work. No, I dont think she is leading a lifestyle of the rich and famous, but she gets to be kid free 3x a week since we pay for them to be in preschool. This costs about 1400$ per month. During that time Im not sure what she does exactly but I have a good hunch that she takes a well deserved nap and watches some netflix. I am happy that she gets to unwind and take get a break from our little monsters.
I know my wife is happy with our lifestyle, we talk about it quite a bit to make sure that she doesnt feel like I am depriving her from enjoying life. What I think some of the people posting here can understand is when you are in debt close to 1m dollars. Even if i am making close to half a million dollars I pay a bit over 100k just in federal taxes. ( number off the top of my head is around 116k I could be a bit off so dont hold me to that exact figure).
So here is a quick and dirty budget that we have, these are approximate numbers again so they probably dont add up to 100%.
Mortgage: 3100$
Student loans: 2100$
Kids Tuition: 1400$
Car payments: 900$ ( I didnt add this into the debt in my OP b/c it wont add much, like pissing in the ocean, they will be paid off in 2 years and we wont be buying new cars for 10+ years)
Insurance: 200$
Food: 800$
Costco: 300$ (food and diapers twins are expensive)
529 accounts: $1500 ( 500 per kiddo)
Gas: 350$
Wifes extras: 1000$ ( this includes anything that doesnt fall into another category, kids clothes, eating out...etc she is in complete control of this).
Utilites: 500$
Kumon (afterschool tutoring for my 4 year old): 230$
Maids: 260$
YMCA membership: 64$
Cable/internet: 120$ ( she locked us into a 2 year contract or this would vanish like a fart in the wind)
Cell phones:175$
Thats comes to $11599. I roughly net about 20k per month. So our goal is to save around 8k each month, to save/invest. I dont think we are living the MMM lifestyle when you look at what we spend
. I hope to increase that when the kids are start public school and at that time we will get rid of cable,maids and cars will be paid off.
Now I know that people will post that 8k per month is a lot of money, and they are right it is. Don't forget the almost 1m that we owe. As a quick side note if I did not work almost every weekend this year I would net just north of $13500 and we would be saving barely 2k. This is what pushed me into working like a madman this and next year ( until I make partner).
So that is basically our entire financial book right there, I want to say that I do take all the advice to heart. I have grown a lot with DW and she has taught me to enjoy the moment and not get so focused on what could or could not happen. Its hard not to stress about the amount we owe and try not to come up with ways to save even more money.