I lurk on this site sometimes but not the kind that posts a lot. Thought I'd contribute here since I just finished calculating my 2010 expenses.
Context: working male, living in suburbs of a large US city with another adult, sharing expenses 50/50.
2010 expenses (for 1 person):
All food: 194/month, or 2323/year (mostly in-house; occasional lunches / dinners out; don't spend time on using coupons)
All housing related: 375/month, or 4495/year, including (numbers below are rounded):
- property taxes: 4300/year
- hired services: lawn mowing, snow removal: 350/year
- other hired services: 620/year: pest control, AC/furnace cleaning, gutter cleaning, misc others (like painting)
- house insurance: 450/year (will be 500 this year)
- utilities:
--- primary phone and internet - $0 (paid by employer ~100/month)
--- second / backup phone: 310/year
--- TV cable: 560/year
--- water/sewer: 400/year
--- electricity: 720/year
--- gas: 1150/year
- Home Depot purchases: 130/year
Total is 8990; so 4495/person.
All car-related: 69/month, or 831/year, including
- car insurance: 414/year
- gas: 253/year (working from home)
- maintenance: 164/year
All other: 77/month, or 918/year, including haircuts, trips (driving to see family), medical (copays + medicine; rest covered by employer plan), gifts, entertainment, clothing (I believe $0 this year), and other credit card / cash expenses.
2010 Subtotal for 1 person: 715/month, or 8580/year
Depreciation: ~4.5k/year?
Car: conservatively, 2k/year (assuming 20k for a car lasting 10 years without major maintenance). I am already beyond 10 years on my current one.
House: AC/furnace (8k), roof (15k), siding (4k?), carpets (??), windows (5k?), washer/dryer (1k), pipes (?), many other (
)... Honestly, I don't know how to evaluate this one - say 50k every 10 years for major maintenance? 5k/year; so 2.5k per year per person. How much do you think this should be?
2010 Total: ~13k/year
Future additional retirement costs:
- small buffer (~1k) as part of bare-bones budget (suppose could be used for extra entertainment if there are left-overs)
- primary phone / internet (~1k)
- medical (?) - free after 2014?
- moving to more expensive area (?)