Thanks for the comment! We have two cars – so we are buying a new car every 5 years – while keeping each car 10 years.

Just one question–800 a month for the car for ten years? 96,000 dollars? That’s a nice car!

I’m assuming that gas, insurance maintenance, etc. is in there. That being said, maybe I have really low car insurance. I’m shocked at what some people pay.

I budget 300 a month, which after gas, car tags, parking stickers, insurance and repairs, usually gives me about 10-15 grand for a good used car every ten years. If I had any desire for a new one, I’d probably just up that by 100 a month.

Cheers! I like having an emergency fund, but, once it’s tapped into there’s got to be a plan to top it back up afterwards. I like how you’re constantly setting aside money for these types of things. Looks like there’s a great amount of wiggle room in the budget. Nice list!

Have a great week!

One lesson everyone should be learning from the pandemic is the importance of an emergency fund. This is typically 6-12 months of living expenses in cash or CDs to cover yourself in case you lose your job.

As far as how to handle planned expenses, here is what I do.

*We drive our cars ten years and then buy a new one. We set aside $800 a month for the purchase of a new car five years from now. This way we never have to take on a car loan and waste money on interest.
*Our house will need a new roof in 5 years so we are setting aside monthly funds to cover that cost ~ $15k.
*Our water heaters are old but still working – we have $2k set aside to replace those when they break.
*My son needs braces (~$4,500) and we have that set aside for later this year.
*Our vacation fund is around $9k right now because we haven’t gone anywhere in a year.

Once you are debt free and have an emergency fund, your cash flow should be pretty big. Instead of blowing it on stupid stuff, start planning for upcoming expenses and save like crazy to pay for them in cash. Avoid credit card/loan interest at all costs to make these purchases cheaper and make a vow to never go into debt again.

Just my two cents ;-)

That’s awesome Chris. I do the same for the most part. I take last years numbers and set my new budget accordingly (except for 2020 as we had really low expenses last year for lockdown). As we get older and grow more wealth, it gets much easier and we’re almost ot the point where we can ditch our budget completely.
Congrats on not touching your emergency bucket. I like that it’s invested and growing in the meantime too!

Nice! I’ve also noticed that the older I get, the easier unexpected costs are to deal with. Each year budgeting gets a little easier!

Every so often we need to tweak – inflation creeps up, expenses drop off, considerations of new expenses come into play, etc — and for those times that items fall outside the scope we have the misc bucket. So far it has worked really well!

If I recall that’s also the episode where George and Elaine switch places. He starts have successes by doing the opposite of every natural instinct, and she has a run of bad luck. Funny stuff!

Awesome, sounds like your regular budget catches it all!