Where DOES all the money go every month?

[cho oyu]

This is kind of disturbing. I hadn't ever done the breakdown before as such. The numbers don't include savings, but...

Taxes: 67%
Rent: 15%
Gasoline: 4%
Food/dining: 4%

90% of all expenditures in four categories. There's not really much point in breaking it down beyond that, I guess. The price of living in a high cost of living region in a high income tax state.

[RetiredGypsy]

This is a great exercise. I have a spreadsheet where I track my expenses, but I've never thought to break down the percentages before.

Insurance: 1.8%
Gas (commmuting): 3.5%
All groceries (food, cleaning supplies, etc.): 8%
Utilities: 2%
Phone: 1.3%
Motorcycle: 1.3%
Eating Out: .00005%
Movies: 0.002%
Road trips (gas only): 0.002%

These are the items where I have control over how much I choose to spend. This is much, much less of a total percentage of what I would have thought if I had to answer off the top of my head.

[RonBoyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lifeisgood Whoa, am I the only one paying paying for local government? My property taxes are 10% of our household budget. 'Dis McMansion is eating me up.

My property taxes are also included in the general category of taxes:

Sales Tax - 1.5%
Federal Income Tax - 7.7% (balance owed on 2007 and estimated 2008
State Income Tax - 0%
Real Estate Tax - 3.6%

Total Taxes - 12.8%

[Rustic23]

Total Automobile 6.8%
Total Bills 3.5%
Charitable Donations 2.5%
Clothing 1.2%
Dining Out 2.4%
Total Education 0.2%
Total Entertainment 3.8%
Gifts 7.0%
Groceries 15.9%
Total Healthcare 2.2%
Total Hobbies 2.6%
Total Home Related 17.3%
Total Insurance 2.4%
Total Miscellaneous 0.1%
Mortgage t 17.9%
Personal Care 0.5%
Total Pet Care 0.9%
Total Travel 9.0%
Total Utilities 3.7%
Total Expenses 100.0%

Property tax in Mortgage.

[RDamien]

I'm not positive I'm doing this properly but I'm trying to learn here. For example say my property taxes were 10,000 and my gross income income was 100,000. I'm doing 10,000 / 100,000 and getting .1 or 10%. Correct?

Here's my rough and dirty breakdown so far:

Home* 38.3%
401k Savings: 14.7%
Federal Taxes: 13.8%
Social Sec: 6.0%
Medicare: 1.4%
State Tax: 2.9%


*Home for me includes property taxes, mortgage, home insurance, utilities, food and any extra we use to pay down the mortgage.

That leaves me with 22.9% to account for and I still have a lot of breaking out to do in my very broad "Home" category. Wow.

[Kronk]

Has anyone ever tried to break down their expenses by the CPI categorizations? And then do a comparison against the CPI percentages to figure out where exactly your spending habits differ from a "typical" American?

[RonBoyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RDamien I'm not positive I'm doing this properly but I'm trying to learn here. For example say my property taxes were 10,000 and my gross income income was 100,000. I'm doing 10,000 / 100,000 and getting .1 or 10%. Correct?

The I had it all wrong. I compared Individual Expenditures to Total Expenditures. Had I used Total Income, my results would have been much smaller... and, to be honest, since we don't spend (per se) much of our income, not very useful information. (Savings are not an expense item... same with money not spent.)

[ProspectiveBum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RonBoyd The I had it all wrong. I compared Individual Expenditures to Total Expenditures. Had I used Total Income, my results would have been much smaller... and, to be honest, since we don't spend (per se) much of our income, not very useful information. (Savings are not an expense item... same with money not spent.)

No, that's the right way to do it. The question is, of the money that goes out every month, where (to what categories) does it go?