[quote=Doooh]My 2010 resolution was to hammer down our finances and our budget. Quickbooks was broken out last night, for a final round before the year ends, and there’s a couple more tweeks needed to come to a hard conclusion.
I want to exclude all toy expenses and rental costs. I have enough wrapped up in toys that I don’t need more, and when I get tired of the ones I have, I’ll have to the time to sell them for what ever new junk I want. Rent will be out of the picture with a paid off home under my belt.
I want to see what food, utilities and clothes cost. We lived frugally, as we normally would have through 2010, though we didn’t try and break ourselves down in order to spend the bear minimus. There’s some savings that can easily be had if we wanted… For instance Turkeys were $5 after Thankgiving those suckers are GOOD deep fried, and they will last a year in the freezer. I hunt and fish, and with some extra TIME laying around, I think all of these things can bring the food bill way down, maybe by 25-40% or so, and we would be eating better to boot.
So, I think I can deduce what our lifestyle would cost minus the extra Health insurance bill and the payed of house maintenance that we’d incur. Fuel cost would drop dramatically, I want to say the work clothes bill would drop too, but I work in pants a t-shirt so there wouldn’t be a change.
What have I missed, besides the cost of a kid or two? (insert sarcasm here)[/quote]
Kids are not that expensive. Child care is. Private school is…but why on earth would part time working parents need private school? We sent our kids to pre-school part time after they could talk with us about it. It was for the experience and socializing.They had fun with almost zero child care stress. That cost a bit, but it was optional.It did help with the quality of all of our lives.
Team Sports could cost some and demands a lot of time, but it isn’t hard or harmful to help them be indifferent about it.We did a couple of years of different stuff to give each kid a taste of it. I told them if they didn’t practice at home I wasn’t going to sign them up.I tried modest encouragement. They didn’t practice. I built them a small BMX track already FREE,close to home and more exercise than baseball, more fun than baseball plus crosstraining(note not a mention of football).
If you look for ways to spend money on them and train them to be expensive they surely will be. We have 3 boys, by the time they start eating a lot they can grow some of their food. Maybe I will even sell some of it. We can pay their way through school farming, and when they are done have farming knowledge, a degree and a farm instead of a ton of debt. Half serious, but geez, people with what you have AND LESS, do find ways to live outside of a full on rat race and raise somewhat thriving human beings too.
